Decisions on investing in health as well as other policies require deciding how to best allocate available resources - recognizing that using labor, materials, and other resources for one purpose means that they cannot be used for other purposes. Approaches for economic evaluation, including...

Conventionally, benefit-cost analysis focuses on economic efficiency, summing the values of a policy’s costs and benefits based on the preferences of those affected. There is widespread agreement that it should be supplemented with information on how the impacts are distributed across...

Benefit-cost analysis and other forms of economic evaluation are powerful tools, encouraging the systematic collection and assessment of the evidence needed to support sound policy decisions. In low-and middle-income countries, where resources are very scarce and needs are very great, such...

The estimates used to value mortality risk reductions are a major determinant of the benefits of many public health and environmental policies. These estimates (typically expressed as the value per statistical life, VSL) describe the willingness of those affected by a policy to exchange their...