One shortcoming of neoclassical welfare economics is that it does not take into account the institutional structure of collective decision making. To draw normative conclusions about policies one needs to understand the process through which government decision making might influence the allocation of resources and then compare market allocations with real world government interventions; rather that comparing real world allocations with some unattainable Pareto ideal. Moreover, when there are conflicts of interests over economic policies, because different groups have different preferred policies and self-interests; some mechanism must be used for choosing a policy. ‘This is what is meant by a collective choice mechanism.' It leads to, in political sense, investing a decision with authority, so that it becomes acceptable policy. Clearly, it is different from the notion of collective choice, mechanism involving aggregation coordination of diverse preferences into a single collective preference to represent a policy. It is the subject matter of the next Unit. Other building block is an economic model which we use to study both the positive and normative sides of policy process. A number of economic tools have been in use, and you must be familiar to at least some of those you have already studied in earlier blocks. One such model is the Principal-Agent Model. The Principal-Agent
Model is highly relevant to the policy process. The others are overlapping generation
model and the continuous time dynamic process analysis. We will not go into technical
details of the techniques involved but have a policy applications view only.