Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes, 3rd ed

M E Drummond, M J Sculpher, G W Torrance GW, et al. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-852945-7 A sketchy outline to the main economic theories forms the introduction to this book. The authors skillfully invoke those theories in the end only to point out that the economic evaluation primarily serves as a pragmatic aid to decision making. The “blue book” systematises and summarises recent knowledge on the main types of economic evaluations, thereby providing a useful overview including sources of further readings. Economic evaluation is defined as a comparative analysis of alternative courses of action in terms of both their costs and consequences. The authors make clear that the subject matter of…