IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/oruesi/2012_005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Comparison of Benefit Cost and Cost Utility Analysis in Practice: Divergent Policies in Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Hultkrantz, Lars

    (Department of Business, Economics, Statistics and Informatics)

  • Svensson, Mikael

    (Department of Economics)

Abstract

We compare state-of-the-art implementation of Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) and Cost Utility Analysis (CUA) as tools for making priorities in allocation of national public funds in the transport sector and health sector, respectively, in Sweden. While the principal distinctions between these methods are well known, less notice has been given to a number of other differences that have emerged as national and international practices have evolved over time along separate lines. We compare cost and benefit components and economic parameter values and find some surprising disparities. There are inconsistencies, both across methods and within each method. Both can be improved by learning from the other. We also find that some current practices conflict with the underlying welfare theory and/or insights from recent empirical analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Hultkrantz, Lars & Svensson, Mikael, 2012. "A Comparison of Benefit Cost and Cost Utility Analysis in Practice: Divergent Policies in Sweden," Working Papers 2012:5, Örebro University, School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:oruesi:2012_005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.oru.se/globalassets/oru-sv/institutioner/hh/workingpapers/workingpapers2012/wp-5-2012.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Börjesson, Maria & Fosgerau, Mogens & Algers, Staffan, 2012. "On the income elasticity of the value of travel time," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 368-377.
    2. Johannesson, Magnus & Weinstein, Milton C., 1993. "On the decision rules of cost-effectiveness analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 459-467, December.
    3. Johannesson, Magnus, 1995. "The relationship between cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 483-489, August.
    4. Hammitt, James K. & Robinson, Lisa A., 2011. "The Income Elasticity of the Value per Statistical Life: Transferring Estimates between High and Low Income Populations," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 1-29, January.
    5. A. B. Atkinson & N. H. Stern, 1974. "Pigou, Taxation and Public Goods," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(1), pages 119-128.
    6. Sugden, Robert & Williams, Alan, 1978. "The Principles of Practical Cost-Benefit Analysis," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198770411.
    7. Abrantes, Pedro A.L. & Wardman, Mark R., 2011. "Meta-analysis of UK values of travel time: An update," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 1-17, January.
    8. Robin Boadway, 2010. "Efficiency and Redistribution: An Evaluative Review of Louis Kaplow's The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(4), pages 964-979, December.
    9. Ulf Persson & Michael Willis & Knut Ödegaard, 2010. "A case study of ex ante, value-based price and reimbursement decision-making: TLV and rimonabant in Sweden," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 11(2), pages 195-203, April.
    10. Gafni, Amiram & Birch, Stephen, 2006. "Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs): The silence of the lambda," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(9), pages 2091-2100, May.
    11. Anderstig, Christer & Berglund, Svante & Eliasson, Jonas & Andersson, Matts & Pyddoke, Roger, 2012. "Congestion charges and labour market imperfections: “Wider economic benefits” or “losses”?," Working papers in Transport Economics 2012:4, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI).
    12. Dan Usher, 2004. "Comments On "the Optimal Supply Of Public Goods And The Distortionary Cost Of Taxation"," Working Paper 1020, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    13. Jonas Eliasson & Mattias Lundberg, 2011. "Do Cost--Benefit Analyses Influence Transport Investment Decisions? Experiences from the Swedish Transport Investment Plan 2010--21," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 29-48, April.
    14. Hultkrantz, Lars & Svensson, Mikael, 2012. "The value of a statistical life in Sweden: A review of the empirical literature," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 302-310.
    15. Thomas Sterner & U. Martin Persson, 2008. "An Even Sterner Review: Introducing Relative Prices into the Discounting Debate," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 2(1), pages 61-76, Winter.
    16. Weinstein, Milton & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1973. "Critical ratios and efficient allocation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 147-157, April.
    17. Hammitt James K. & Robinson Lisa A, 2011. "The Income Elasticity of the Value per Statistical Life: Transferring Estimates between High and Low Income Populations," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-29, January.
    18. Anders Anell & Ulf Persson, 2005. "Reimbursement and clinical guidance for pharmaceuticals in Sweden," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 6(3), pages 274-279, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andersson, Henrik & Hultkrantz, Lars & Lindberg, Gunnar & Nilsson, Jan-Eric, 2017. "The role of economic analysis for investment priorities in Sweden’s transport sector," Working papers in Transport Economics 2017:12, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI), revised 23 May 2018.
    2. Hultkrantz, Lars & A. Krüger, Niclas & Mantalos, Panagiotis, 2014. "Risk-adjusted long-term social rates of discount for transportation infrastructure investment," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 70-81.
    3. Moritz A. Drupp & Martin C. Hänsel, 2021. "Relative Prices and Climate Policy: How the Scarcity of Nonmarket Goods Drives Policy Evaluation," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 168-201, February.
    4. Treich, Nicolas & Yang, Yuting, 2021. "Public safety under imperfect taxation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    5. Fouquet, Roger, 2011. "Long run trends in energy-related external costs," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2380-2389.
    6. Börjesson, Maria & Eliasson, Jonas, 2012. "The value of time and external benefits in bicycle appraisal," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 673-683.
    7. Jessica Ochalek & James Lomas & Karl Claxton, 2015. "Cost per DALY averted thresholds for low- and middle-income countries: evidence from cross country data," Working Papers 122cherp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    8. Muller, Nicholas Z., 2019. "The derivation of discount rates with an augmented measure of income," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 87-101.
    9. Johannesson, Magnus & O'Conor, Richard M., 1997. "Cost-utility analysis from a societal perspective," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 241-253, March.
    10. Lanzi, Elisa & Dellink, Rob & Chateau, Jean, 2018. "The sectoral and regional economic consequences of outdoor air pollution to 2060," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 89-113.
    11. Victoria Y. Fan & Dean T. Jamison & Lawrence H. Summers, 2016. "The Inclusive Cost of Pandemic Influenza Risk," NBER Working Papers 22137, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Siverskog, Jonathan & Henriksson, Martin, 2022. "The health cost of reducing hospital bed capacity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    13. Henrik Andersson & James Hammitt & Gunnar Lindberg & Kristian Sundström, 2013. "Willingness to Pay and Sensitivity to Time Framing: A Theoretical Analysis and an Application on Car Safety," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(3), pages 437-456, November.
    14. Acland, Daniel J. & Greenberg, David H., 2023. "Distributional weighting and welfare/equity tradeoffs: a new approach," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 68-92, March.
    15. Herrera-Araujo, Daniel & Rochaix, Lise, 2020. "Does the Value per Statistical Life vary with age or baseline health? Evidence from a compensating wage study in France," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    16. Patrick Carlin & Brian E. Dixon & Kosali I. Simon & Ryan Sullivan & Coady Wing, 2022. "How Undervalued is the Covid-19 Vaccine? Evidence from Discrete Choice Experiments and VSL Benchmarks," NBER Working Papers 30118, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Detlof von Winterfeldt & R. Scott Farrow & Richard S. John & Jonathan Eyer & Adam Z. Rose & Heather Rosoff, 2020. "Assessing the Benefits and Costs of Homeland Security Research: A Risk‐Informed Methodology with Applications for the U.S. Coast Guard," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(3), pages 450-475, March.
    18. McKenna, Claire & Chalabi, Zaid & Epstein, David & Claxton, Karl, 2010. "Budgetary policies and available actions: A generalisation of decision rules for allocation and research decisions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 170-181, January.
    19. Arthur E. Attema & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L’Haridon & Patrick Peretti-Watel & Valérie Seror, 2018. "Discounting health and money: New evidence using a more robust method," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 117-140, April.
    20. James K. Hammitt & Peter Morfeld & Jouni T. Tuomisto & Thomas C. Erren, 2020. "Premature Deaths, Statistical Lives, and Years of Life Lost: Identification, Quantification, and Valuation of Mortality Risks," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(4), pages 674-695, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Benefit Cost Analysis; Cost Utility Analysis;

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:oruesi:2012_005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ieoruse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.