Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
970476 | The Journal of Socio-Economics | 2009 | 5 Pages |
Abstract
Persistent anomalies in the results of willingness to pay studies, despite improvements in measurement technique, challenge the assumption in economics that all sources of value are commensurable. Two sources of incommensurability have been identified: interdimensional incommensurability, which refers to the cognitive difficulty that people encounter when trying to assign a monetary value to health; and constitutive incommensurability, which arises when some forms of trade-off are regarded as ‘taboo’. In this paper we explore whether the notion of taboo trade-offs might explain some of the difficulties experienced in health-related willingness to pay studies.
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities
Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Economics and Econometrics
Authors
Alan Shiell, Daniel Sperber, Carly Porat,