Decision Thresholds and Changes in Risk for Preventive Treatment
研究了在风险变化环境下，预防性治疗（有潜在副作用）的决策阈值如何受个体风险偏好和风险增加方式的影响，提示忽略风险差异可能导致成本效益评估的重大误差。
This paper investigates the notion of treatment threshold for preventive treatment with potential side effects in the context of changes in risk. Changes in risk are defined by the concept of nth-order stochastic dominance and concern the effectiveness of preventive treatment, side effects, severity of the potential disease, and comorbidity risk. The impact of a riskier environment on the probability of disease threshold above which the preferable decision is to undergo preventive treatment is shown to depend on both mixed risk averse individual preferences and the configuration of increase in risk considered. These results suggest that neglecting differences between risks when evaluating the treatment threshold is likely to lead to substantial errors in most cost-benefit applications for preventive treatment.