Robert Fabian

Valuing health for policy : an economic approach

Preface 1: Overview George Tolley, Donald Kenkel, Robert Fabian. 2: Framework for Valuing Health Risks Mark Berger, Glenn Blomquist, Donald Kenkel, George Tolley. 3: Cost of Illness Approach Donald Kenkel 4: Contingent Valuation of Health Donald Kenkel, Mark Berger, Glenn Blomquist. 5: Household Health Production, Property Values, and the Value of Health Richard Clemmer, Donald Kenkel, Robert Ohsfeldt, William Webb. 6: The Qualy Approach Robert Fabian 7: Issues in Questionnaire Design Robert Fabian, George Tolley. 8: Empirical Results from Household Personal Interviews Michael Brien, Donald Kenkel, Austin Kelly, Robert Fabian. 9: Empirical Results from Mail Questionnaires Wallace Wilson 10: Defining and Measuring Health over Life Lyndon Babcock, Anthony Bilotti. 11: The Quantity and Quality of Life: A Conceptual Framework Sherwin Rosen 12: Modeling of Choices with Uncertain Preferences Charles Kahn 13: Design of Contingent Valuation Approaches to Serious Illness Robert Fabian, Lyndon Babcock, Anthony Bilotti, George Tolley. 14: Future Directions for Health Value Research George Tolley, Robert Fabian. 15: State-of-the-Art Health Values George Tolley, Donald Kenkel, Robert Fabian. 16: The Use of Health Values in Policy George Tolley, Donald Kenkel, Robert Fabian, David Webster. References Contributors Index

Estimating the Value of Improved Water Quality in an Urban River System

Improved water quality in the rivers of the metropolitan area is one of the benefits that can be derived from controlling combined sewer overflow in older large cities. This article estimates the value that cleaner rivers would have to Chicago citizens, and thus measures an important component of value to which the Chicago Deep Tunnel project can be expected to contribute. In a contingent value survey, average annual household values ranging from about

Issues in improvement of the valuation of non-market goods

30 to

Cost-effectiveness of atypical antipsychotic medications versus conventional medication.

50 were observed for various degrees of improvement. An important result is that from two-thirds to nine-tenths of these reflect the intrinsic value of the rivers-nonuse values related to the existence of clean rivers or the option to use them in the future. A comparison with similar published studies confirms the credibility of the results.

An Empirical Principle for Deductive Theory in Economics

Environmental goods including services of natural resources and health are examples of goods not priced by trade in markets, for which it is widely agreed that monetary valuations are needed to throw light on their worth relative to market goods. Econometric and other approaches deducing values through revealed behavior constitute one way to estimate true values. Interview techniques are another. Some take strong views in favor of one of the two ways. Others take the eclectic view that both ways have something to offer and are needed in view of the difficulty at best of deducing non-market values. Most of this special volume is concerned with interview techniques, offered in the belief that this general approach is robust and susceptible to improvements that the articles explore. The articles grew in part out of the Conference on Valuing Non-Market Goods held at the University of Chicago in the Summer of 1995.

Asbestos Removal and Treatment Impacts on Housing and Urban Neighborhoods

For almost 50 years, typical antipsychotics were the mainstay of pharmacological treatment for schizophrenia. However, during the last decade, the widespread use of expensive atypical antipsychotic medications has led to a dramatic increase in the proportion of the direct costs of schizophrenia being allocated for medications. Although there is evidence that the atypical antipsychotic clozapine may lead to cost savings in patients with refractory schizophrenia, the cost-effectiveness of the other atypical antipsychotics remains in question. Therefore, long-term randomised, prospective cost-effectiveness studies that compared an atypical to a typical antipsychotic have been reviewed in this paper. There were serious methodological problems with all the studies. In general, those that were based on efficacy trials showed an advantage for atypicals, whereas those based on effectiveness studies found the opposite. It seems that, to the extent that studies mimic real world conditions, they fail to support the cost-effectiveness of the atypical antipsychotics.

Valuing Health for Policy

Economists have in recent years become increasingly concerned with a controversy of basic importance to numerous areas of scientific analysis. The controversy turns on the occurrence in theory of terms and statement-forms whose empirical content is not firmly established. That such concepts are found in economic theory is acknowledged by most economists. Nevertheless, two distinct schools of thought seem to be emerging among economists concerning their validity in economic theory. One school of thought holds that economic theories contain terms

Child discipline and family decision-making

Reducing the health hazard caused by the presence of asbestos in buildings is likely to give rise to costly adjustments in the nations stock of buildings. This article focuses on the residential building stocks, and estimates the effects of several regulatory scenarios on building values, building life and the decision to convert buildings to high-income uses. We find that the value of low-income buildings is seriously eroded by the abatement scenarios analyzed. Conversion of buildings by rehabilitation is discouraged because values inclusive of rehabilitation costs are seriously reduced, and incentives to delay are introduced. Effects on building values in high-income neighborhoods are relatively less severe. Asbestos has been present in buildings for many years and has been employed in a great variety of productive uses. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that it is present in 55 percent of all residential buildings over ten units in size [1]. In recent years, however, its life-threatening properties have become widely recognized and demands for solutions to the health problem it poses have proliferated. To a growing extent, residential building owners, the focus of this article, must consider the demand for