Health economics: foundations, areas of application and methodology

The course consist of two major parts: (1) microeconomic analyses of public health policy, and (2) theories and methods used to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of public health interventions and policys. The first part introduces basic microeconomic theories and concepts and how these can be applied to understand and analyze health behavior, health care and public health policy, such as; theories of demand and supply, production and delivery of health and health care, financing of health services, adverse selection and moral hazard, economic analyses of the pharmaceutical market and innovation. Throughout the first part of the course, the theories and methods will be presented, discussed, and analyzed in relation to applications to public health topics and policy. The second part of the course deals with methods to evaluate public health interventions and policy, both in terms of efficacy and effectiveness (e.g. effects on a certain health outcome) and in terms of the cost-effectiveness. Considering that interventions in the public health area often lack evidence from randomized experimental studies, a particularly important part of the second part refers to if, when, and how causal conclusions can be drawn from non-experimental evaluation studies. Theories and methods to assess cost-effectiveness will include how to identify, measure, and value economic costs, health outcomes and benefits from public health interventions, and specifically how to relate benefits to costs. Methods to analyze and assess the uncertainty from evaluation studies will also be an important section in the second part of the course. Finally, the second part of the course will also include a section where health economic, ethical and distributional theories and perspectives are jointly discussed in terms of how they can be used as inputs to public health and health care priority setting and decision making.