Are health care prices falling?
It seems like everything just gets more and more expensive. But are prices for medical care declining? Cutler et al. (1998) found in seminal paper […]
Economics – General
The origins of the Grossman ‘Demand for Health’ model
Michael Grossman’s “Demand for Health” model turns 50 this year. To celebrate, Dr. Grossman himself provided some reflections in an article in Health Economics this […]
AMA recommends that physicians should learn about health economics
Should physicians learn about health economics? The American Medical Association (AMA) thinks so. In a statement from 2019, the organization stated The American Medical Association […]
How did COVID-19 models differ when they were built by economists vs. epidemiologists
As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, policymakers looked to researchers to both predict the future trend of the pandemic as well as examine how different policy […]
Where did the money from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) go?
That is the question answered in a paper by Autor et al. (2022). Some background on PPP: Congress enacted the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which […]
When is full health insurance not optimal
In many markets, however, we observe that lower income individuals do not purchase the most generous forms of health insurance. For instance, despite the passage […]
The Economics of Foster Care
This is something I knew very little about and thus Bald et al. (2022) NBER working paper was fascinating to read. They describe the key […]
Oleg Itskhoki wins Clark Medal
The 2022 winner of the John Bates Clark medal is Oleg Itskhoki. Each year, the medal goes to the American economist under the age of […]
Did health care productivity really decline in recent decades?
Based on analysis from National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs), multifactor productivity (MFP) in the health care and social assistance sector declined by 0.4% per […]
Can better physician practices reduce Medicare spending?
According to a paper by Rodriguez et al. (2022), the answer is ‘yes’. They use data from the 2017–18 National Survey of Healthcare Organizations and […]
What happens to the federal deficit when interest rates rise 1%
Interest rates in the U.S.–as measured using the Fed Funds Rate–have been effectively 0% since the start of the pandemic. In fact, the last time […]
Relative Risk Aversion: Empirical Estimates
What would you prefer: Option A: Flip a coin with where if it lands heads you win $20 but if it lands on tails you […]
Health Years in Total (HYT)
Standard quality approach compares the difference in QALYs which is a function of survival and quality of life during each survival period. Consider the comparison […]
CHEERS 2022
How should you report the methodology, results and limitations of your economic model? One of the most commonly used approaches is the Consolidated Health Economic […]
2021 Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Card, Angrist and Imbens
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics goes to David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens due to their work on “natural experiments” and how this […]
Should policymakers use a social discount rate?
Discount rates are commonly used in the world of finance. Would you rather have $1 today or $1 in 5 years? Most people would prefer […]
How happy are you?
This question seems simple, but answering the key factors that impact your happiness is complex. Is happiness based on your personal situation (e.g., family, job, […]
Conversations with Tyler: David Cutler
Tyler Cowen has an interesting interview with Harvard health economist David Cutler speaking about (what else?) health economics. Below is an excerpt: CUTLER: Everything that […]
Distributional Cost Effectiveness Analysis: A simple example
I have written previously about the need for distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA) which would increase the value of treatments who improve the health for individuals […]
Uncertainty and Vaccination Decisions
An interesting result from Courbage and Peter (2021): …uncertainty about the probability of side effects and the efficacy of the vaccine always reduces take-up under […]
Job security and health: An asymmetric impact
COVID-19 has increased job insecurity for many workers around the world. At the same time, after vaccinations, job growth is slowly coming back. Will increased […]
Preventive care as an insurance policy
Joe Newhouse has a nice overview article on the value of preventive care in the latest edition of the Journal of Economic Literature. He makes […]
Average cost to bring a drug to market is over $1 billion
The cost to bring a drug to market is a hotly debated topic. The costs include not only the costs for basic science and clinical […]
Measuring Hospital Quality
Quality of care is difficult to measure. Even if you had a perfect measure of quality in terms of health outcomes, risk adjustment is imperfect. […]
Is the value of a QALY constant?
Standard cost-effectiveness analysis assumes that any gain in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) should be valued equally. This does not sound unreasonable, but is it true […]
Should pay toilets be illegal?
At first glance, John Cochrane makes a compelling case that pay toilets should not be illegal. The absence of pay toilets is in fact a […]
Why R&D expenses rising and productivity falling could be a good thing
A few facts: Pharma is increasingly a key driver of US R&D. Pharmaceutical firms share of R&D increased from <10% in the early 1970s to […]
Quotation of the day
Once you start trading for yourself, you start thinking for yourself. Yeonmi Park, escapee from North Korea, author of In Order to Live: A North […]
Incorporating weight-based dosing into a budget impact model
Budget impact models aim to let payers know how much a new drug will cost them. Clearly, payer cost depends on the dose. Some drugs […]
Opioid abuse: Where you live matters
‘If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?’ This is a common parenting phrase is meant to motivate kids to reject peer’s actions […]
What makes a great economist?
From John Maynard Keynes’ Essays in Biography: The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is […]
COVID-19 impact on small businesses: October 2020 Update
Results from a survey titled “Coronavirus Impact and Recovery of the Small Businesses Economy“, which has collected responses from over 520,000 business owners in the […]
