Getting Less for More: Economic Evaluation in theSocial Welfare Field

Economic evaluation has an important role in helping to make decisionsabout the use of scarce resources in an explicit and rational manner, yeteconomic evaluation is not well-developed in many areas of socialwelfare. This paper looks at the reasons for this, focusing on whateconomists could do to redress the situation. It argues that standardapproaches to economic evaluation may not always be appropriate,because of the nature of many social welfare interventions and becauseevaluators need to be able to address a broader set of evaluationquestions. Economists could usefully contribute more to the debates thathave concerned mainstream evaluators from other disciplines andmodify their approach to evaluation accordingly. The paper concludesthat in many areas of social welfare, economists should probably be lessambitious in terms of what they set out to achieve in terms of economicevaluation, but more ambitious in terms of the types of programme theycan usefully help to evaluate and in terms of the range of techniquesthey are prepared to use, and give credence to, as part of an economicevaluation.[...]