Administrative data and data linkage; collecting health
data for econometric analysis; categorical data methods; count data; duration analysis; econometric evaluation by non-experimental methods; econometric evaluation with randomized experiments; econometrics in technology assess- ment; macro panels; models of health care costs; models for risk adjustment; panel data methods; productivity analysis; simulation methods and mixture models; spatial econometrics.
Measuring causal effects is a tricky business. But, it’s necessary if we want to appropriately design effective policies and interventions. Many things are not amenable to manipulation in an experiment and so we rely upon a toolbox of statistical tools… Read More »Does political reform really reduce child mortality?
P-values do not indicate whether a scientific finding is true. Statistical significance does not equal economic or clinical significance. And p-values are often presented for tests that have no bearing on the questions being posed. So what’s the point? Empirical… Read More »Should we just abandon p-values altogether?
Free to choose? Reform, choice, and consideration sets in the English National Health Service. M Gaynor, C Propper, and S Seiler. 2016. American Economic Review [RePEc] Forthcoming The enhancement of patient choice about healthcare provider is a popular target for reform across many European… Read More »Free to choose?: A comment on Gaynor, Propper, and Seiler (2016)
A six hour delay flying home from the Health Economists Study Group conference in Gran Canaria is providing me with ample time to mull over the great issues in life. One of these big issues is of course the trade-off… Read More »Biased towards bias?
This a short post just to bring to your attention STAN, a tool for Bayesian statistical inference. It’s been around for a few years now but like many of these things it can be slow to percolate down to the… Read More »STAN: A tool for Bayesian inference and MCMC
In a previous post I asked whether the study by Claxton et al can or should inform the cost-effectiveness threshold used by NICE. The authors argued that, “it is the expected health effects … of the average displacement within the… Read More »Identifying the effect of expenditure on health outcomes: another small comment on Claxton et al
Today sees the publication of surgeons’ death rates on the MyNHS website (see Guardian and BBC stories). The website presents full lists of surgeons by specialty alongside either blue circles with a large ‘OK’ inside, grey circles with question marks, or… Read More »Is there any use in publishing surgeons’ death rates?
I stand accused. Not of a particularly heinous crime, but of something that has given me pause for thought recently. During a discussion about a piece of work involving patient outcomes, I was accused of ‘thinking like an economist’. Had… Read More »Do economists care about patients?
By Mohsen Sadatsafavi and Stirling Bryan In economic evaluation of health technologies, evidence synthesis is typically about quantification of the evidence in terms of parameters. Bootstrapping is a non-parametric inferential method in trial-based economic evaluations. On the surface the two… Read More »Bayesian evidence synthesis and bootstrapping for trial-based economic evaluations: comfortable bed fellows?
WinBUGS is a widely used free software program within health-economics. It allows for Bayesian statistical modelling, using Gibbs sampling. (Hence the name: the Windows version of Bayesian inference Using Gibbs Sampling). One of the drawbacks of WinBUGS is the notoriously… Read More »Solution for Trap 66 (Postcondition violated)