Health Economics

This book introduces students to the growing research field of health economics.Rather than offer details about health systems around the world without providing a theoreticalcontext, Health Economics combines economic concepts with empirical evidence toenhance readers' economic understanding of how health care institutions and markets function. Itviews the subject in both microeconomic and macroeconomic terms, moving from the individual and firmlevel to the market level to a macroeconomic view of the role of health and health care within theeconomy as a whole. The book includes discussion of recent empirical evidence on the U.S. healthsystem and can be used for an undergraduate course on U.S. health economics. It also containssufficient material for an undergraduate or masters course on global health economics, or for acourse on health economics aimed at health professionals. It includes a chapter on nurses as well asa chapter on the economics of hospitals and pharmaceuticals, which can be used in master's coursesfor students in these fields. It supplements its analysis with readings (both classic and current),extensive references, links to Web sites on policy developments and public programs, review anddiscussion questions, and exercises. Downloadable supplementary material for instructors, includingsolutions to the exercise sets, sample syllabuses, and more than 600 slides that can be used forclass presentations, is available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/health_economics. A student solutionsmanual with answers to the odd-numbered exercises is also available.

Frank Sloan is J. Alexander McMahon Professor of Health Policy and Management and Professor of Economics at Duke University. A leader in the field of health economics for more than thirty years, he is coauthor of The Price of Smoking (2004) and Medical Malpractice (2008) and coeditor of Incentives and Choices in Health Care (2008), all published by the MIT Press. Chee-Ruey Hsieh is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics, Academica Sinica, Taiwan, and the coeditor of three previous books on the economics of health care.