Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness are methods that measure the efficiency of interventions and achieve desired outcomes. These types of analyses can help policymakers analyze the value of a program relative to its costs. Very often in this type of analysis, there is talk about achieving ‘cost savings, which can be a misnomer since true cost savings are often difficult to estimate. These methods demonstrate whether the impact achieved is worth the costs/investment, build awareness of the program’s value, and inform decision-making about continued funding and sustainability. The ethical foundation of cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness, utilitarianism, was conceived by the nineteenth-century British philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mills. Their framework has provided a framework to allocate scarce resources to enhance social welfare. This paper describes the ethical framework implied by cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and utilitarianism, as applied to economic analysis. After delving into utilitarianism, we then present the frameworks of cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness and how should the analyst proceed to use these methods to examine real-world problems. In addition, we argue that while there is no feasible ethical resource allocation in economics; consequently, the utilitarian framework underlying cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness generally provides strong guidance that is better than the alternatives and should be used to assess resource allocation in economics.