Consumers' surplus as an exact and superlative cardinal welfare indicator

This article shows that the Bennet-Bowley consumer surplus measure is an ex act measure of Allais' disposable surplus if the consumer's utility functio n is of the translation-homothetic generalized quadratic form. The Bennet-B owley consumer surplus measure, therefore, is a superlative cardinal welfar e measure for the entire class of translation homothetic preferences. Becau se the exactness results in this article apply for cardinal welfare measure s, they can be meaningfully aggregated across consumers to make aggregate w elfare comparisons.