The Management and Economics of Resources and the Environment (MERE) research group is currently composed of 18 researchers. While the group’s expertise spans a variety of disciplines and fields of research, the group has impressive knowledge and insights about economic evaluation which I recently surveyed for fun.  

Back in January I challenged the group to answer a short survey on their use of economic evaluation methods and their experiences with interdisciplinary research. By economic evaluation methods, I mean Cost-Effectiveness, Cost-Utility and Cost-Benefit Analysis, the latter of which has been considered by some economists as “the best game in town” to evaluate policies (Pearce, 1998). Out of 17 researchers (18 researchers, and excluding myself), I got 11 responses, which yields a response rate of 65%. I would say I got a representative sample of the research group! 

My first two questions intended at evaluating our knowledge on economic evaluation: the vast majority of us is very familiar with economic evaluation, and 73% of us have used Cost-Benefit Analysis before (in a published or unpublished paper, teaching, blogs, etc).  

I then asked the group a more provoking question: “Do you think Cost Benefit Analysis is typically done in an interdisciplinary way?”. Here, the answers were a lot more diverse: 2 people agreed, 3 people disagree and 2 were not sure. Two more perspectives came up: two people argued that whether CBA is done in an interdisciplinary way depends (on context, for example), and three people argued that CBA is typically done in a multidisciplinary way, rather than interdisciplinary.  

Here, I had to look up the definitions of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work, to understand the nuances of the definition. From Dictionary.com: “Interdisciplinary work typically involves the linking or combination of two or more fields of study to create a synthesized whole. Multidisciplinary work draws on the knowledge from two or more fields of study as well, but is often used to describe work in which the boundaries of the disciplines involved are maintained.” Upon discussion, the group hypothesized that the current practice of CBA resembles multidisciplinary work, wherein economists stay within the boundaries of their discipline but draw knowledge from other disciplines, rather than engaging across disciplines with ongoing dialogue.  

Finally, I asked the group: “what needs to happen (in practice) for a Cost-Benefit Analysis to be truly interdisciplinary?”. While asking hard questions like these was optimistic of me, the MERE group came up with some interesting insights. On the one hand, CBA work is perceived as non-novel, and researchers cannot publish in prestigious journals, much like they are incentivized to do by universities. On the other hand, the group identified “low-hanging fruit” to improve interdisciplinary work, such as ensuring that work from other disciplines is incorporated in scenario development and sensitivity analysis of any CBA.  

References:  

Pearce, D. (1998). Cost benefit analysis and environmental policy. Oxford review of economic policy, 14(4), 84-100.