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Although a little out of date, I came across a recent rankings of U.S. Economics departments.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…
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…
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.”
As my colleague Mike Ewens wrote to me: “Monopolists hate competitors and have to use the government to keep them away.” An example that takes center stage can be found in a recent Chicago Tribune article (“AMA takes on Retail Clinics“) . Some doctors have asked the AMA to ban on in-store clinics currently being…
What’s does a DDD mean for a PBM? What is a QALY? What is the difference between ‘face validity’ and ‘construct validity’? The Pharmacoeconomics journal has a Glossary of Terms used in Health Economics which are very useful for anyone who wishes to disentangle to the jargon used in this field.
Giving corporate executives bonuses based on the performance metrics of the company they manage is one way to incentivize managers to increase profits, sales, company stock price or any other financial measure. But is this the best way to run a company? In 1985, Paul Healy wrote prescient paper of how corporate executives can alter…
Monetary incentives improve performance. This statement is almost gospel in the economics field. For instance, if I pay all my blog readers $1 for each time they visit this website, it is likely that the traffic on Healthcare Economist will increase dramatically. Sales staff compensated on a 100% commission basis often sell more items than…