Employment creation, technological efficiency, and distributional judgements : a case study in road construction / [by] G.W. Irvin

The present article is concerned with the relationship between distributional and efficiency criteria and the objective of employment creation in a single sector, that of road construction. The work is based on a series of case studies carried out in Iran, one such study being presented here, in which the potential for substituting labour for equipment is explored and techniques of social benefit-cost analysis applied to determining technology selection. Optimal factor use and hence employment is shown to depend, inter alia, on explicit judgements concerning income distribution.