CHE seminar - Utilitarian or Quantile-Welfare Evaluation of Health Policy?

Event details

Abstract:

This paper considers quantile-welfare evaluation of health policy as an alternative to utilitarian evaluation. Manski (1988) originally proposed and studied maximization of quantile utility as a model of individual decision making under uncertainty, juxtaposing it with maximization of expected utility. That paper's primary motivation was to exploit the fact that maximization of quantile utility requires only an ordinal formalization of utility, not a cardinal one. This paper transfers these ideas from analysis of individual decision making to analysis of social planning. We begin by summarizing basic theoretical properties of quantile welfare in general terms rather than related specifically to health policy. We then turn attention to health policy and propose a procedure to nonparametrically bound the quantile welfare of health states using data from binary-choice time-tradeoff (TTO) experiments of the type regularly performed by health economists. After this we assess related econometric considerations concerning measurement, using the EQ-5D framework to structure our discussion.

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About the speaker

Charles F. Manski

Charles F. Manski has been Board of Trustees Professor in Economics at Northwestern University since 
1997. He previously was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1983-98), the Hebrew 
University of Jerusalem (1979-83), and Carnegie Mellon University (1973-80). He received his B.S. and 
Ph.D. in economics from M. I. T. in 1970 and 1973. He has received honorary doctorates from the University 
of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’ (2006) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2018). Manski=s research spans 
econometrics, judgment and decision, and analysis of public policy. He is author of Patient Care under 
Uncertainty (Princeton, 2019), Public Policy in an Uncertain World (Harvard 2013), Identification for 
Prediction and Decision (Harvard 2007), Social Choice with Partial Knowledge of Treatment Response
(Princeton 2005), Partial Identification of Probability Distributions (Springer, 2003), Identification Problems 
in the Social Sciences (Harvard 1995), and Analog Estimation Methods in Econometrics (Chapman & Hall, 
1988), and co-author of College Choice in America (Harvard 1983). He has served as Director of the Institute 
for Research on Poverty (1988-91), Chair of the Board of Overseers of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 
(1994-98), and Chair of the National Research Council Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal 
Drugs (1998-2001). Editorial service includes terms as editor of the Journal of Human Resources (1991-94), 
co-editor of the Econometric Society Monograph Series (1983-88), member of the Editorial Board of the 
Annual Review of Economics (2007-13), and member of the Report Review Committee of the National 
Research Council (2010-18). Manski is an elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is an 
elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the American 
Statistical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Distinguished Fellow 
of the American Economic Association, and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.