Economics and episodic disease

Benefit-cost analysis of public policies designed to protect the environment and the public from environmental contaminants is growing in popularity, whether as the determinative criterion or as an ingredient in a broader assessment of a policy's desirability. Also growing, unfortunately, is the number of poorly executed analyses, which not only degrade the decisions they are meant to inform but cast doubt upon the usefulness of benefit-cost analysis as a decision tool. Harrington, Krupnick, and Spofford display in this work an example of a properly conducted analysis. In the traditional manner of studies conducted at Resources for the Future, they proceed with extreme care and attention to detail in fashioning an appropriate blend of economic theory and innovative empirical analysis to estimate the social costs to a community arising from an outbreak of waterborne disease.^ The focus of their study is the outbreak of giardiasis