Promoting Evidence-Based Environmental, Health, and Safety Policies

Benefit-cost analysis is a well-established and widely used approach for systematically assessing policy impacts and informing decisions. It is a required component of the policy development process followed by many government agencies and organizations around the world.

Benefit-cost analysis plays an important role in highlighting key trade-offs and informing policy decisions. It explicitly recognizes that resources are constrained and that deciding how to best allocate these resources is extremely difficult, especially given the many problems that need to be addressed. Successfully applying this framework and interpreting the results requires understanding the underlying assumptions and generally accepted practices, including their advantages and limitations.

In particular, the approach used to value mortality risk reductions—commonly referred to as the value per statistical life (VSL)—is widely misinterpreted. However, many government agencies and other organizations have developed default values to be used in assessing their policies. For non-fatal illnesses and injuries, a major challenge is the need to use proxy measures for valuation due to gaps and inconsistencies in the research literature. Appropriately estimating these values when conducting benefit-cost analysis, and understanding the implications, is essential to promote evidence-based decisions in the face of numerous crucial policy challenges.

In this online program, Lisa A. Robinson, a leading Harvard expert on benefit-cost analysis, will aid you in understanding the basic analytic framework and its application globally. You will learn about methods for valuing changes in health and longevity and the estimates recommended for use in high-, middle-, and low-income settings. She will be accompanied by experts who will illustrate the application of these methods in several policy areas. Through interactive presentations, case studies, and extensive discussion, you will develop a deeper understanding of these approaches and their application.

You will leave this program understanding the advantages and limitations of benefit-cost analysis and improve your ability to evaluate, interpret, and use the results.

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