No E2009/04, Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces from Centro de Estudios Andaluces
Autores: José Mª Abellán Perpiñán, Jorge Eduardo Martínez Pérez, Fernando Ignacio Sánchez Martínez, e Ildefonso Mendez-Martínez
Abstract
This paper applies a method, first proposed by Miyamoto (2000), to adjust health state utilities accounting for curvature of the utility function of life duration. Such a method is not susceptible to error propagation and avoids biases due to probability weighting. Group estimates obtained with the new adjustment method were, in general, consistent with previous evidence.
Several axiomatic tests of the QALY model under both expected utility and rank-dependent utility were also performed. According to the results obtained from a large general population survey, it seems that a multiplicative QALY model with a power utility function for life duration may be a reasonable approximation to individual true preferences. Finally, we also found that the common practice of freely transferring health state utilities across riskless and risky contexts may be wrong for a significant number of conditions.