We explore in this paper the implications of ethical and operational principles for the evaluation of population health. We formalize those principles as axioms for social preferences over distributions of health for a given population. We single out several focal population health evaluation...

The concept of capabilities, introduced originally by Sen with the aim to provide a better basis for the theory of inequality, has inspired many researchers but has not found any simple formal representation which might be instrumental in the construction of a comprehensive theory of equality....

In a recent paper Happich and Mühlbacher [Eur J Health Econom (2003) 4:292-294] proposed an axiom of constant absolute trade-off in life years, and studied the family of QALY models satisfying this axiom under expected utility and mutual utility independence between life years and health state....

In this paper we consider solutions which select from the core. For games with side payments with at least four players, it is well-known that no core-selection satifies monotonicity for all coalitions; for the particular class of core-selections found by maximizing a social welfare function...

In a recent work by Dolan and Edlin it is concluded that no link can be established between cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). However, the conclusion seems to depend rather heavily on what is understood by a link between CBA and CEA as well as on the exact...

The concept of capabilities, introduced originally by Sen, has inspired many researchers but has not found any simple formal representation which might be instrumental in the construction of a comprehensive theory of equality. In a previous paper (Keiding, 2005), we investigated whether...

In the first part of the paper, we consider various QALY (quality-adjusted life year) models in situations where health varies over time, and provide a theoretical analysis of model identification and parameter estimation from time trade-off and standard gamble scores. We investigate...

We take Gary Becker's child quantity-quality trade-off hypothesis to the historical record, investigating the causal link from family size to the literacy status of offspring using data from Anglican parish registers, c. 1700-1830. Extraordinarily forhistorical data, the parish records enable us...

In this study we investigate the causal impact of increasing adult longevity on higher education. We exploit the fourth stage of the epidemiological transition, i.e. the unexpected decline of deaths from heart attack and stroke in the 1970s as a large positive health shock that affected...

Why does the rate of population growth decline in the face of economic growth? We show that growing product variety may induce a permanent reduction in the demand for children and a continuous rise in income and consumption.