Possibilities of macroeconomic policy evaluation on the basis of macroaggregates

Macroeconomic policy is often evaluated solely on the basis of empirical evidence, such as observing the behavior of macroaggregates. This paper argues that this approach bears a shortcoming: "improvement" of macroaggregates can be socially undesirable under certain circumstances. Thus the sole exploration of macroaggregates is not sufficient to evaluate the macroeconomic policy -axiomatic economic theory must be used as well to determine whether the outcomes of macroeconomic policy are beneficial to society or not. The paper first offers a precise definition of a social welfare function (based as much as possible on microfoundations). Then it considers the possibility that macroaggregates might not always correlate with society's welfare. Some illustrations are covered too.

Keywords: macroeconomic policy evaluation, social welfare