The Validity of QALYs under Non‐Expected Utility
在非期望效用框架下检验健康经济学中常用的时间线性QALY模型的两个假设，发现生活质量与寿命可分离，但寿命效用为凹函数而非线性，为健康评估提供了新证据。
This paper examines applications of non-expected utility in the health domain. The most widely used utility model in health economics, the time-linear QALY model, assumes (i) separability of quality of life and life duration, and (ii) linearity of the utility for life duration. We perform new tests, which are robust to violations of expected utility, of these two assumptions. The data support separability, but show that the utility for life duration is concave rather than linear. The finding of concave utility may not be surprising in itself. The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate this empirically without being invalidated by violations of expected utility.