Health Economics

Health economics is a special form of economics. Just as in any economic analysis, attention is paid to benefits, costs, efficiency and equity of actions of economic agents (i.e., consumers). However, health and health care have several special characteristics. For instance, preferences are often situation-specific, consumption of health and care can be context- and region-specific, there is an information asymmetry as a result of the knowledge gap between consumers and health care professionals, there are various types of health care systems each with their own specific attributes, and health in itself may be considered non-tradeable. As a result, health decision makers as well as health-related goods and services deserve a special focus when it comes to economic evaluation.

In this course, students are introduced to key concepts from (behavioral) economics, applied to the domain of health and care. We will apply these concepts to i) understand health behavior, both rational and non-rational, ii) conduct economic evaluations of health, care and health care systems (e.g., through cost-effectiveness analysis and examining efficiency and equity of health interventions), and iii) explore what this means for individuals, organisations and governments aiming to promote healthier behavior (e.g., through nudging, boosting, or regulation).

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Demonstrate understanding of (behavioral) economic approaches to analyse health decision making
• Demonstrate understanding of supply and demand on the marketplace of health and care
• Identify societal issues pertaining to consumption and provision in the domain of health and care
• Apply (behavioral) economic insights to understand and analyse concrete issues in the domain of health and care