Resource scarcity is the raison d'être for the discipline of economics. Thus, the primary purpose of economic analysis is to help decision-makers when addressing problems arising due to the scarcity problem. The research reported here was concerned with how cost-effectiveness information is...

The conventional approach to the diagnosis and treatment of severe knee injuries is arthroscopy, a minimally invasive surgical procedure. Since arthroscopy is an invasive technique that carries risks, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly being used for diagnosis. MRI is potentially...

There remains disagreement about the preferred utility-based measure of health-related quality of life for use in constructing quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). The recent development of a new measure, the SF-6D, has highlighted this issue. The SF-6D and EuroQol EQ-5D measure health-related...

ABSTRACT A major driver of cost growth in health care is the rapid increase in the utilisation of existing technology and not simply the adoption of new technology. Health economists and their health technology assessment colleagues have become obsessed by technology adoption questions and have...

The appropriate criteria that should be used in setting priorities in a publicly funded health care system remain open to debate. From a health economics perspective, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) are increasingly portrayed as a measure of societal value and the criterion of QALY...

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The application of conjoint measurement to the field of health economics is relatively new, although there is growing interest and there have been a number of studies undertaken recently. Wider acceptance of the technique requires methodological issues concerning both reliability and validity to...

Over recent years there has been renewed interest in cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in health care but the ‘hypothetical bias’ concern (i.e. the belief that WTP values overstate real preferences) is a remaining anxiety. This paper reports new empirical data comparing hypothetical and real...