[2] Negishi's research has provided a wide range of extensions to orthodox general equilibrium modelling.

These are controversial insofar as they recognize and embed into economic analysis a varying and unequal price of life across different countries.

Elizabeth A. Stanton specifically criticized this approach in Negishi Welfare Weights: The Mathematics of Global Inequality, 2011, arguing in an interview [5] that: This is argued by Stanton and others to be both inequitable and inaccurate, as over time that "current distribution" would change, making the policy advice even more wrong than it was when it was decided.

Joshua K. Abbott and Eli P. Fenchel[6] acknowledged that "Negishi weights are often criticized on ethical grounds.

An empirical observation that remains unexplained is why the income distribution observed in 1948 by George F. Kennan, when the US had 50% of world wealth (and presumably income) with 6% of its population,[7] remained so similar to the price of life ratio between developed and developing world as of Kyoto in 1990, at about 15 to 1.