This paper attempts to quantify the private and public economic value of reducing obesity through pharmaceutical and medical interventions. We find that the economic value of such treatments, in particular bariatric surgery, is large for treated patients, with incremental cost-effectiveness...

We propose to combine clinical trial and estimates of behavioral responses in the population to quantify the value of new drug innovations when such values cannot be obtained by randomized experiments alone. New drugs are seen as having two distinct effects on patients. First, they can provide...