Dr Mylene Lagarde COW.43.02

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Global Health. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course will serve as an introduction to apply economic tools and concepts to understand problems in health arising in Low- and Middle-Income countries. It will then provide students with an understanding of how health policies informed by economic concepts can provide adequate answers to these issues. The course will provide students with a strong economic framework to understand how individuals involved in health care systems (patients, providers, insurers) make decisions which affect the utilisation and delivery of health care services. The course will present key theoretical concepts and use empirical evidence particularly relevant for policy questions in low- and middle-income settings. 

By the end of this course, students will:

• be comfortable applying economic reasoning and models to analyse health care policies and markets;
• be familiar with the seminal literature and evidence in the health economics and health policy fields in low- and middle-income countries;
• understand the economic models of decisions made by economic agents on the demand- and supply-side of health care markets;
• understand complex interactions between health care providers, insurance companies, governments, and their impact on behaviours and health outcomes.

15 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the MT. 3 hours of help sessions in the ST.

Ten 1.5 hour lectures and ten one hour seminars, plus a three-hour revision seminar in the ST.

In-class progress test in the MT.

The course draws from a variety of textbooks and articles. A thorough reading list is provided at the start of term. The course makes repeated use of the following textbooks:

Stephen Morris, N. J. Devlin, David Parkin (2007) Economic analysis in health care. J. Wiley & Sons.

J Bhattacharya, T Hyde & P Tu, Health Economics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Other key papers include:

Arrow, Kenneth J (1963), ‘Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care’, American Economic Review 53(5), December, pp.941-73.

Manning W et al, Health Insurance and the demand for medical care: evidence from a randomized experiment, American Economic Review, June 1987, pp. 251-277.

Cohen, Jessica, and Pascaline Dupas. "Free Distribution vs. Cost-Sharing: Evidence from a Malaria-Prevention Field Experiment in Kenya." Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 (1), pp.1-45, February 2010.

Miguel, Edward, and Michael Kremer. "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities." Econometrica 72, no. 1 (2004): 159-217.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.