A study on research status and development trend of cost-effectiveness analysis

This paper reviews large-scale literatures about the cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). It presents the definition and the importance of CEA, what fields apply CEA and where we should go further based on the present study. CEA is important to understand and improve behavioral interventions, and it is helpful to guide resource allocation. This method is applied in many areas like health and medical care, environment protection, and efficiency analysis of resources. Results show that CEA is applied to the planning and management of many types of organized human activities. Future studies should challenge the previous theoretical imperfectness, combined with other fields; the level and perspective should be extended; and the researches should be done from industrialized countries to developing countries.