Instructor: Robin D. Hanson, Associate Professor, Economics
(rhanson@gmu.edu, http://hanson.gmu.edu)
Office Hours: Officially Mon 6:00-7:00pm, Th 3:00-4:00pm, but I'm usually in at 10A Carow Hall.
Call ahead (703-993-2326) if you want to be sure.
Catalog Entry:
Econ 496, 895 Health Economics (3:3:0). Prerequisites: ECON 306. Determinants of Health. Supply, Demand, and Institutions of Health Insurance and Care. Evaluation of Market Failure Rationales for Regulation.Reccomended Texts: (None are required.)
Sherman Folland, Allen C. Goodman, Miron Stano, Economics of Health and Health Care, 4=5th Edition, Prentice Hall Business Publishing, 2007, ISBN: 9780132279420, Sample Price $120.
Charles E. Phelps, Health Economics, Addison Wesley Publishing, 2003, ISBN: 0-321-06898-X, Sample Price $110.
Joseph P. Newhouse And The Insurance Experiment Group, Free For All? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN: 0-674-31914-1, Sample Price $27.Goal of Class
For undergraduates: To become familiar with basic facts and issues in health economics, and to be able to make an economically-coherent defense of one's opinions on health policy questions.Assignments:
For graduate students: To in addition write a coherent research (not term) paper related to health economics.
Week | Lecture Topic | |
Jan 25 | Overview of Health Economics. What Makes Us Healthy? | |
Feb 1 | More What Makes Us Healthy? | |
Feb 8 | Does Medicine Help Health? | |
Feb 15 | More Does Medicine Help Health? | |
Feb 22 | Medicine in Other Times and Places | |
Mar 1 | Health Externalities | |
Mar 8 | Demand for Health and Medicine | |
Mar 15 | Spring Break | |
Mar 22 | Supply of Medicine | |
Mar 29 | Health Insurance | |
Apr 5 | Variation in Quality of Medicine | |
Apr 12 | Licensure, Certification, and Bans | |
Apr 19 | Other Ways to Get Information on Quality | |
Apr 26 | Explaining Health Strangeness | |
May 3 | More Explaining Health Strangeness |
On the web page, this links to a page of sources, most of which have links.