Willingness to pay in the context of an economic evaluation of healthcare programs: theory and practice.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is defined in the methodology literature as a form of economic evaluation in which both costs and consequences are measured in monetary terms. In recent years we have witnessed renewed enthusiasm for CBA and the use of willingness to pay (WTP) as a method of measuring benefits from healthcare providers. Using the economics perspective, this paper assesses the usefulness of the WTP measure in a context of CBA analysis …