卡尔多改进（Kaldor efficiency），也称卡尔多-希克斯效率（Kaldor-Hicks efficiency），为1939年，约翰·希克斯提出的、以比较不同的公共政策和经济状态。

如果一个人的境况由于变革而变好，因而他能够补偿另一个人的损失而且还有剩余，那幺整体的效益就改进了，为福利经济学的一个著名的准则。

A Kaldor–Hicks improvement, named for Nicholas Kaldor and John Hicks, also known as the Kaldor–Hicks criterion, is a way of judging economic re-allocations of resources among people that captures some of the intuitive appeal of Pareto efficiencies, but has less stringent criteria and is hence applicable to more circumstances. A re-allocation is a Kaldor–Hicks improvement if those that are made better off could hypothetically compensate those that are made worse off and lead to a Pareto-improving outcome. The compensation does not actually have to occur (there is no presumption in favor of status-quo) and thus, a Kaldor–Hicks improvement can in fact leave some people worse off.