When deciding how to weigh benefits to different groups, standard economic models assume that people focus on the final distribution of utility, health or whatever. Thus, an egalitarian is assumed to be an egalitarian in the outcome space. But what about egalitarianism in the gains space, such...

Health state valuations, elicited by methods such as the standard gamble and the time trade-off, give an indication of the value that an individual attaches to particular health states. As measures of individual values, it has been argued that such valuations serve as poor proxies for social...

The person trade-off (PTO) is increasingly being used to elicit preferences in health. This paper explores the measurement properties of the PTO method in the context of a study about how members of the public prioritise between patients of different ages. In particular, it considers whether PTO...

In cost-utility analysis, the numbers of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained are aggregated according to the sum-ranking (or QALY maximisation) rule. This requires that the social value from health improvements is a simple product of gains in quality of life, length of life and the number...

The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) assumes that the value of a health state is linearly related to the time spent in it, which implies that the value of a health state is independent of the states which precede or follow it. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a suitable condition to test this...

Expected Utility (EU) theory is the standard economic model of individual preferences under uncertainty. However, observed violations of the axioms of EU have generated interest in the incorporation of a stochastic element into deterministic models of decision-making. Previous empirical...

Many theories have been put forward to explain attitudes towards ambiguity. This paper reports on an experiment designed to test for the existence of Comparative Ignorance when it is tested over events with a range of different likelihoods. A total of 93 subjects valued a series of gambles, one...

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom...

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom...

The EQ-5D general population valuation set (or 'tariff') is increasingly being used in the evaluation of health care interventions and has been recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) for use in cost-utility analyses of health technologies. To be of use to...