HECON4100 – Fundamentals of Health Economics

Knowledge

The course will provide you with knowledge of:

• the peculiar economic characteristics of health and health care markets
• what characterizes market failures in health care markets and what causes the failures
• the concept of production function of health & health care
• economic aspects behind physician agency and supplier induced demand
• key economic concepts and analysis about health care insurance markets
• risk, risk aversion and demand for health care insurance
• loading costs and the behavior of insurance firms
• moral hazard and the role of demand-side cost-sharing
• impact of health insurance on the efficient allocation of resources in the health care market
• supply-side cost sharing
• adverse selection
• limits of health care insurance markets
• how observed regulations of health care markets can be linked to particular sources of market failure

Skills

You will learn how to:

• interpret agent`s behaviour according to the perspective of economic rationality
• understand economic reasons leading to frailty and failure in markets for health care
• interpret public policies as addressing tradeoffs in health care allocations
• use diagrams as a tool to represent:
• demand for health, health care and health care insurance
• decisions of health care providers
• fundamental tradeoffs in health care allocation

General competence

You will be able to:

• link different policy recommendations to specific types of market failure
• recognize the key economic tradeoffs implied in different healthcare allocation problems
• understand economic reasons behind trends in health care system development

This course is only available for students at the following master programmes:

• Health Economics, Policy and Management (master)
• Folkehelsevitenskap og epidemiologi (master)

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

Individual written exam.

Examination and grading at The Faculty of Medicine.

For students at HEPAM: The problem set will be given in English. Answers can be given in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or in English.

For students on the epidemiology-track: The problem set will be given in English. Answers can be given in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or in English.