Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
There is a very interesting article by James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly regarding the manufacturing sector in China, with a particular focus on Shenzhen. The article requires a subscription but the Finance Famulus and The Huffington Post websites offer an excerpts. There is slide show on the Atlantic website for free, however, which also…
Although a little out of date, I came across a recent rankings of U.S. Economics departments. The paper (“Rankings of U.S. Economics Departments“) is written by Richard Dusansky and Clayton J. Vernon and was published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives in 1998. The rankings are as follows: Rank University 1 Princeton 2 Harvard 3…
On The Library of Economics and Liberty website, there is an interesting article from a Friedrich Hayek‘s 1945 AER paper (“The Use of Knowledge in Society“). The paper begins with a discussion of scientific compared to practical knowledge (i.e.: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place). “…scientific knowledge, occupies now so prominent…
Below is a summary of some of the interesting points in the lecture of Mathias Kifman. Gouveia model This is a topping up political economy model. First, we have individuals who get utility from consumption and health care. There are two types: high risk πh and low risk πl. There are also two incomes, yi:…
In the forthcoming days, I will be summarizing some of the lectures given at the European Science Days summer school in Steyr, Austria. On the first day, there was an interesting lecture by Louis Eeckhoudt about risk and pain disaggregation. Most individuals are familiar with the concept of risk aversion. However, the lecture spoke extensively…
The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at the Colorado Health Insurance Insider.
The Healthcare Economist is off to Europe. I’ll be vacationing in Istanbul for about a week. Afterwards, I will attend the European Science Days summer school on the Economics of Health and Healthcare in Steyr, Austria. Postings to this blog will resume as soon as I return.
What is more important: economic theory or testing these theories empirically? In her paper in the Economists’ Voice, Barbara Bergmann calls for “A New Empiricism” in the field of economics. For instance, the assumption that individuals are rational decision makers may be hard to substantiate empirically. The researchers [Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky] found that…
If you’re an economist and in need of a laugh, check out the Stand-up Economist’s Principles of Economics, Translated on YouTube. Is their a difference between micro-economists and macro economists? “The difference of course being that micro economists are people who are wrong about specific things, and macro economists are wrong about things in general.”
This past weekend I watched Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko. The movie was fairly entertaining as it attempted to persuade the audience that universal health care is the way to go in the U.S. It was, however, a far from accurate portrayal of health care in the U.S., Cuba, France, the UK, and Canada. The…