Introduction

Many evaluations will be looking for evidence of what returns there have been for the investment or resources put into an intervention. Fulfilling users’ appetite for this is not the exclusive preserve of economic evaluation. A capable process evaluation can show accountabilities for those resources, and an impact evaluation can go further to explore how efficiently allocated resources delivered expected benefits. However, neither are well- placed to demonstrate robustly to decision- makers whether achieved outputs and outcomes justified the resources that went into them; economic evaluation looks to fill that gap.

Evaluators who are not economists, or lack that insight, may be cautious about tackling economic evaluation; that caution is well- placed. Even a rudimentary grasp of economic theory will show the challenges faced in robustly demonstrating if an intervention's costs outweighed its benefits or if there were ‘more economic’ ways of achieving those outcomes.

Not all of the economic ‘asks’ of an evaluation will be so demanding. But where there is greater ambition, this calls for an approach chosen from a highly specialised domain; here, however, the language of economic analysis can hold back making sensible choices for what is ‘purposeful’. This chapter seeks to demystify much of the terminology, as well as set out possible pathways and how best to make choices between them.

What is ‘economic’ in economic evaluation?

If the evaluator places themselves in the policy makers’ or users’ shoes, they will see that the importance of the economic dimension of evaluation stems from a combination of (likely) scarcity of resources and the need for an intervention to make the best of what is allocated or available.