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Health and its Value

Attributes of health; measurement of health; value of health;
value of life; value of avoiding risk of ill-health; utility measures of health-related quality of life; stated and revealed preference methods of measuring willingness to pay; conjoint analysis.

Are we estimating the effects of health care expenditure correctly?

It is a contentious issue in philosophy whether an omission can be the cause of an event. At the very least it seems we should consider causation by omission differently from ‘ordinary’ causation. Consider Sarah McGrath’s example. Billy promised Alice to… Read More »Are we estimating the effects of health care expenditure correctly?

Transformative treatments: a big methodological challenge for health economics

Social scientists, especially economists, are concerned with causal inference: understanding whether and how an event causes a certain effect. Typically, we subscribe to the view that causal relations are reducible to sets of counterfactuals, and we use ever more sophisticated… Read More »Transformative treatments: a big methodological challenge for health economics

Public or patient preferences: ex ante, ex post… extraneous?

As alluded to in yesterday’s journal round-up, on reading a recent article by Versteegh and Brouwer, I have had some thoughts about the way we think about the the debate between the use of either patient or public preferences for… Read More »Public or patient preferences: ex ante, ex post… extraneous?

PrEP: A story in desperate need of health economics communication

The poor state of public economics communication has been decried in many fora. The consensus of economists regarding issues such as the impacts of austerity, leaving the European Union, and other major policy choices, is in general poorly communicated to the public. With… Read More »PrEP: A story in desperate need of health economics communication

Three arguments in favour of a negative social discount rate

In the last journal round up, we featured a paper that found that gains to life were valued higher than gains to consumption under standard assumptions about preferences. This sounds like one of those common sense things that are touted… Read More »Three arguments in favour of a negative social discount rate

Review: Happiness by Design (Paul Dolan)

Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life Hardcover, 256 pages, ISBN: 9780241003107, published 28 August 2014 Amazon / Google Books / Allen Lane Many economists balk at the mention of happiness research. I consider myself a sceptic. But people… Read More »Review: Happiness by Design (Paul Dolan)