This article reviews the use of several valuation methods as they relate to drug abuse and places them within the context of U.S. policy. First, cost-of-illness (COI) studies are reviewed and their limitations discussed. Second, three additional economic methods of valuing drug abuse are reviewed, including cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA),…

Resource optimization in building design is based on the total system over its expected useful life. Alternative environmental systems can be evaluated in terms of resource costs and goal effectiveness. (Author/MF)

A partial survey of the literature on the economics of vocational training reveals three important lessons on how evaluations may be undertaken using data on pay, inputs, and outputs. The first lesson is that social, corporate, and private returns to vocational training in developing countries appear to be high enough to justify expanding training…

Aspects are summarized of a current approach to social indicator research and related problems in policy analysis generated by an interest in isolating major sources of variability in the generation of human welfare and developing indicators associated with welfare-generating processes. A set of models being developed for indicator research is…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the problems and prospects of applying production function or input-output analysis to the process of schooling. The cognitive aspect of schooling is discussed here and is restricted to those aspects readily measured by achievement tests. It is argued that education production function studies should…

Education in general and specific educational projects fit into the construct of the allocation of investment resources that is basic to economic theory. Two techniques of computing returns to education and education projects are benefit-cost ratios and rates of return, which both rely on measuring costs and benefits. While measuring costs is…