Abstract The relationship between economic ideas and public policy is a growing area of sociological inquiry. This paper examines a unique case of economic influence on policy: use of cost-effectiveness analysis in assessing the expansion of newborn screening programmes. Unlike other forms of influence in which economic ideas precede the creation of new policies and are used to aid policy-making, in this case, economics is used to justify newborn screening expansion post-hoc. We describe cost-effectiveness analysis as a technology of economic justification, and we examine how its assembly, standardization and application is the result of compromises made by researchers navigating the tension between standardized guidelines and unreliable data sources.

中文翻译：

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拯救婴儿的成本：经济学家如何证明政策的合理性

摘要 经济思想与公共政策之间的关系是社会学研究的一个不断增长的领域。本文考察了经济对政策影响的一个独特案例：使用成本效益分析来评估新生儿筛查项目的扩展。与经济思想先于制定新政策并用于帮助决策的其他形式的影响不同，在这种情况下，经济学被用来证明新生儿筛查扩张事后的合理性。我们将成本效益分析描述为一种经济论证技术，并且我们研究了它的组装、标准化和应用如何是研究人员在标准化指南和不可靠数据源之间的紧张关系中做出妥协的结果。