 The second step of cost-benefit analysis is more problematic. To aggregate the individual willingnesses to pay, cost-benefit analysis simply sums the individual willingnesses to pay. One can see immediately several difficulties with this procedure. First, each ranking is ordinal; the numbers have no significance beyond the order. Suppose that, using the status quo Q as a baseline, K assigns a number 2 to policy X, a number 4 to policy Y and a number 16 to policy Z while, when using policy P as a baseline, she assigns a number 3 to policy X, a number 9 to policy Y and a number 27 to policy Z. As the representations are ordinal, one cannot conclude anything about K’s intensity of preference; her Q-based representation of her preferences “assesses” the difference between Z and Y as six times the difference between Y and X while her P-based representation of her preferences thinks the difference between Z and Y is only three times the difference between Y and X. not prefer Z to Y. The choice of baseline may thus affect the choice of policy.