During the roughly four decades since the end of World War II, the health care system in the United States has experienced historically unprecedented change in three dimensions. First, new technologies have revolutionized the ways in which health care is capable of being practiced. Almost all of...

Improved health is desirable. But so is improved housing, so are improved highways, flood control, recreation facilities, and so on, through an almost interminable list of the things people wish to, have. Unfortunately, we cannot have everything we want. We must decide which goods and services...

The paper provides estimates of (1) research expenditures on poliomyelitis, (2) several forms of productivity benefits from applying the knowledge generated by the research, and (3) the costs of applying that knowledge. Internal rates of return are computed under a variety of assumptions, with...