Greetings! We are Vivana Rodriguez and Brian Yates, the new Economic Evaluation Section editors for AJE. After introducing ourselves, this AEA365 blogpost shares our first call for submissions and more!
Viviana: I’m honored to serve as a co-section Editor for the Economic Evaluation (EE) Section with Brian. I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and I’m excited to serve the field and AJE in this capacity. My research focuses on the economics of education with a special focus on cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost analyses in educational contexts. My CV and more are here.
Brian: I am so happy to be co-associate editing the Economic Evaluation (EE) Section with Viviana! … and honored to serve our field in this capacity. I’ve been an economic evaluator, conducting cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses in health and human services, for 50 years. My day job has been in academia for almost as long, now as a tenured Professor at American University in Washington DC, in its Department of Psychology. I also served on AEA’s Board of Directors, and as Treasurer, for two 3-year terms from 2008 through 2013. My CV and more are here.
First Call for EE manuscripts!
AJE’s Economic Evaluation section is a space for exemplary methodological and empirical work that deepens our understanding of economic evaluation and the value these methods bring to understanding and guiding social policy and investments. We invite you to submit manuscripts to our section of AJE describing theories, qualitative as well as quantitative methods, findings, uses, and constructive critiques of cost-inclusive evaluations.
Including costs in evaluations, and comparing them to outcomes, is essential according to the late Michael Scriven, a founding parent of our field. Dr. Scriven wrote in 2008 that “cost analysis in evaluation” was “the missing half of quantitative evaluation.” Dr. Henry Levin introduced cost-effectiveness analysis to evaluators in a seminal chapter in Guttentag and Struening’s two-volume Handbook of Evaluation Research in the late 1970s. We continue their advocacy by welcoming manuscripts reporting, critiquing, and advancing several types of cost-inclusive evaluation.
Cost-effectiveness analysis evaluates the types, amounts, and value of resources used to achieve nonmonetary outcomes such as improved well-being, increased vaccination rates, or decreased risk of depression or of oppression of human rights. Cost-benefit analysis evaluates the types, amounts, and value of resources used to achieve monetary outcomes such as savings in future health or mental health services and increased income for program participants. Value for Money and Social Return On Investment also are forms of economic evaluation that include costs, that that we hope to see in our Inbox.
Rad Resource
Consider participating in the AEA TIG that focuses on economic evaluation: the Costs, Effectiveness, Benefits, and Economics TIG!
Hot Tip
Attend our CEBE TIG presentations at the annual AEA conference. Join the CEBE TIG to network with fellow economic evaluators, as well as students and consumers of economic evaluation, at quarterly virtual MeetUps.
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