Supply
The quantity of a good or service producers are willing and able to offer for sale at a given price over a specified period.
Encyclopaedia
Explore comprehensive, evidence-informed explanations of key health economics concepts, including their development, application and relationships to other concepts. Published entries are validated through human expert review.
Supply Curve
A graph showing the relationship between price and the quantity producers are willing to supply, typically sloping upward as price rises.
Tariff
The specific set of utility weights, derived from a population valuation study, used to convert health status instrument responses into a single score.
Technical Efficiency
A condition in which the maximum possible output is produced from given inputs, without regard to whether those inputs serve their highest-value use.
Theil Index Health
An information theory based inequality measure applied to a health outcome's distribution, decomposable into inequality within and between population subgroups.
Threshold Approach
A decision-making method that classifies an intervention as cost-effective or not based on whether its ICER falls below a predetermined threshold.
Time Horizon
The span of time over which an economic evaluation captures relevant differences in costs and outcomes among the options being compared.
Time Preference
The general tendency to prefer a benefit sooner rather than later, or a cost later rather than sooner, underlying the case for discounting.
Time Trade-Off
A health state valuation method asking how many years in full health a respondent would consider equal to a longer period in an impaired state.
Time Value of Money
The principle that a given sum of money is worth more today than the same sum received in the future.
Time Without Symptoms of Progression
A phase within the Q-TWiST framework covering the period free of significant treatment toxicity or disease progression symptoms, typically weighted highest.
Time-Driven ABC
A simplified variant of activity-based costing using the cost per unit of time for resource capacity and the time an activity takes, rather than activity surveys.
Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing
A costing method estimating a service's cost by multiplying the capacity cost rate of resources involved by the time required to complete each activity.
Top-Down Costing
A costing method that starts from total observed expenditure for a programme and divides it by units delivered to produce an average unit cost.
Trade-off
A situation in which achieving more of one objective requires accepting less of another, such as extra health benefit only at extra cost.
Utility
A numerical representation of the satisfaction, wellbeing, or preference an individual derives from a particular outcome, state, or good.
Utility Function
A mathematical representation of preferences that assigns a numerical value to each possible outcome, so higher-utility outcomes are preferred.
Utility Maximisation
The behavioural assumption that individuals make choices intended to achieve the highest possible satisfaction given their preferences and constraints.
Value of Statistical Life
A monetary estimate of the value society places on reducing the risk of death, derived from willingness to pay for a small risk reduction.
Value of Statistical Life Year
An adaptation of the value of statistical life expressed per life-year rather than per life, adjusted for age and remaining life expectancy.