Ethics and Benefit-Cost Analysis Special Issue – Center for Health Decision Science

Benefit-cost analysis is well-established and widely used to inform policy decisions. Its normative foundations are explored in “Ethics and Benefit-Cost Analysis,” a special issue of the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis. The issue was organized and edited by CHDS Deputy Director Lisa Robinson. It includes nine articles that investigate alternative conceptions of individual and societal welfare, their application, and the implications, from both practical and ethical perspectives.

Conventional benefit-cost analysis encourages systematic investigation of policy impacts and provides important insights, and can be feasibly implemented due to decades of methodological development and application. Although it has many advantages, it also has certain limitations. Conventional benefit-cost analysis reflects a relatively narrow conception of welfare, deriving values from the monetary trade-offs individuals are willing to make, and ignores how impacts are distributed across advantaged and disadvantaged individuals.

The starting point for the special issue was a 2022 Brocher Foundation Summer Academy, “Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise – The Ethics of Health Valuation,” organized by Robinson, Nir Eyal, Samia Hurst, and Daniel Wikler. Summer Academy participants were then invited to contribute to this peer-reviewed special issue, for which the Brocher Foundation was the principal financial supporter. Supplemental funding was provided by the Rutgers University Center for Population-Level Bioethics, the University of Geneva Institute for Ethics, History, and the Humanities, and the University of Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting, co-founded by CHDS affiliate Ole F. Norheim.

CHDS faculty contributed to three of the special issue articles. In addition to drafting the introduction, Ethics and Benefit-Cost Analysis: Introduction to the Special Issue, Robinson co-authored From Benefit-Cost Analysis to Social Welfare: A Pragmatic Approach with CHDS faculty James Hammitt and Maddalena Ferranna. Hammitt also co-authored The Right Numeraire or the Just Weights? How to Make BCA Rational and Fair with Marc Fleurbaey.

Learn more: Read the “Ethics and Benefit-Cost Analysis” special issue articles:

Ethics and Benefit-Cost Analysis: Introduction to the Special Issue (Lisa A. Robinson)
The Right Numeraire or the Just Weights? How to Make BCA Rational and Fair (Marc Fleurbaey and James K. Hammitt)
Social Welfare Functions and Health Policy: A New Approach (Matthew D. Adler)
The Global Burden of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparing Benefit-Cost Analysis and Social Welfare Analysis (Maddalena Ferranna)
From Benefit-Cost Analysis to Social Welfare: A Pragmatic Approach (Maddalena Ferranna, James K. Hammitt, and Lisa A. Robinson)
The Value of Life in the Social Cost of Carbon: A Critique and a Proposal (John Broome)
Lessons from Applying Value of Statistical Life and Alternate Methods to Benefit-Cost Analysis to Inform Development Spending (Alice Redfern, Sindy Li, Martin Gould, Felipe Acero, and Daniel Stein)
The Health-Augmented Lifecycle Model and Corrigendum (J.P. Sevilla)
Citizen Preferences and BCA: A Model of Willingness-to-Pay Behind a Veil of Ignorance (Morgan Beeson, Susan Chilton, Hugh Metcalf, and Jytte Seested Nielsen)
Monetizing Animal Welfare Impacts for Benefit-Cost Analysis (Mark Budolfson, Romain Espinosa, Bob Fischer, and Nicolas Treich)