Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
In a recent paper, Laska, Meisner and Siegel address issues concerning hypothesis testing in cost‐effectiveness analysis. They relate the relative magnitude of two average cost‐effectiveness ratios to the incremental cost‐effectiveness ratio and go on to propose a statistical procedure for testing the equality of two average ratios. In this paper, we show why the use of average cost‐effectiveness ratios is misleading and argue that the appropriate focus for cost‐effectiveness analysis is the estimation of confidence intervals around incremental cost‐effectiveness ratios. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.