Multi-Criteria Policy Analysis

Multi-criteria policy analysis applies multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to appraise and rank policy options against several, often conflicting, objectives that cannot be reduced to a single money metric. Each option is scored on a set of explicit criteria — economic, social, environmental, distributional — the criteria are weighted to reflect their relative importance, and the scores are aggregated into an overall value that ranks the options. Set out comprehensively in Belton and Stewart's 2002 textbook and operationalised for government in the UK's widely used Multi-Criteria Analysis Manual, the approach makes the trade-offs in a policy decision transparent and structured rather than implicit.