Benefit-Cost Analysis of a Controlled Experiment: Treating the Mentally Ill
首次对精神卫生领域的随机对照实验进行成本效益分析，比较传统医院治疗与社区治疗的多维成本和收益，指出忽视收益形式变化会导致结论扭曲。
This study is the first benefit-cost analysis of a controlled (random assignment) experiment in the mental health field. It compares, in terms of an unusually wide variety of "tangible" and "intangible" forms of benefits and costs, a traditional hospital-based approach to treating the mentally ill with a nontraditional community-based approach. The study highlights the very different forms taken by the effects of the alternative therapies. Thus it shows how distorted conclusions can result from a failure of benefit-cost analyses to measure benefits and costs comprehensively; a change in form can be mistaken for a change in level of costs or benefits.