ABSTRACT
An important empirical challenge in the economics of resistance has been the measurement of the cost of resistance. Although there is widespread agreement that resistance places an economic burden on society, nobody is quite sure how large this burden might be. Earlier efforts to quantify the social welfare losses associated with bacterial resistance to antibiotics arrived at a range that varied from $300 million to $30 billion depending on factors such as the value attributed to lost human lives (Phelps 1989). A 1999 study estimated that the deadweight loss associated with the loss of antimicrobial effectiveness associated with outpatient prescriptions in the United States was $378 million and possibly as high as $18.6 billion (Elbasha 1999).
