Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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 Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) checklist. CHEERS was developed in 2013 (Husereau et al. 2013) and a new version has been developed this year (Husereau et al. 2022). Below are the…
Let’s say that you’re a billionaire. Should you donate to charity now or wait until you die and then donate? If you believe in Effective Altruism, this depends on whether the value of your donation is higher now or in the future. One could argue that you should donate now since in the future–assuming progress–people…
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 econometric technique can inform important research questions in labor economics. From the Nobel Prize press release: Using natural experiments, David Card has analysed the labour market effects of minimum wages, immigration and…
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 $1 today. For instance, if you had $1 today and put it in a bank account, it would be worth more than $1 in 5 years. Thus, when making financial…
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, income, health) measured in an absolute sense or relative to others? If measured in a relative sense, what reference point is used? One approach to measuring your life satisfaction is…
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 we know in healthcare is that people have difficulty choosing on the basis of price and quality. It goes back a little bit to some of the behavioral issues that…
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 who currently have the worst expected quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE). I’ve written about this in AJMC and Health Affairs among other places. One key question many individuals may have is…
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 ambiguity aversion. However, uncertainty about the underlying disease, being the probability of sickness or the probability of a severe course of disease, may either encourage or discourage vaccination. Because vaccination…
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 job security undo deleterious impacts of previous job insecurity worries? An interesting finding from Lepinteur (2021) weighs in on the topic: Is workers’ health more sensitive to losses than gains…
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 three key points: Preventive care may save money, but often does not. That does not mean that they are not high value. Preventive care should be seen as an insurance…