Health economics最新文献

This paper explores the evolving role of health economics within economic research and publishing over the past 30 years. Historically, largely a niche field, health economics has become increasingly prominent, with the share of health economics papers in top journals growing significantly. We aim to identify the factors behind this rise. Using a combination of bibliometric methods and natural language processing (NLP), we classify abstracts to define health economics. Adapting NLP methods to evaluate the novelty, impact, and quality of academic papers, we demonstrate that the mainstreaming of health economics is driven by innovative, high-quality research, with two notable waves in quality ratings that highlight the emergence and impact of distinct subfields within the discipline. We find a strong positive correlation between citations and quality ratings, with health economics papers receiving fewer citations for their quality compared to other economics fields. Pandemic-related research received a high number of citations during 2020 and 2021; however, our findings indicate that this work was not systematically more novel or impactful than prior studies within the same subfield.

We examine the causal effect of a French flu vaccination campaign on vaccination behavior. Individuals aged 65 and over receive an invitation letter with a voucher for a free flu shot, while those who are not eligible have to cover the costs themselves. Using a Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, we find that receiving the invitation letter with the voucher leads to a significant increase in the likelihood of getting vaccinated. This effect is driven by individuals who are risk-averse. As illustrated in our theoretical model, for them, the costs of influenza infection outweigh the costs of the vaccine's side effects.

Previous research shows that choices are influenced by how probabilities are presented, that we value losses more than gains, and that we misunderstand cumulative probabilities over time. These factors are important when designing discrete choice experiments (DCEs) because almost all include some representation of probability over a time period. Contraceptive choice is one of the most common health choices and requires people to trade-off between efficacy, side effects, and modality. We used a DCE to explore whether people chose differently when faced with positive or negative framings of contraceptive effectiveness or valued 1-year or 3-year cumulative risks differentially. We developed a simple eight-task DCE with three attributes: effectiveness, administration frequency, and (non-)hormonal nature. Participants saw effectiveness as either positively or negatively, and with numerically equivalent 1-year and cumulative 3-year effectiveness values. We used mixed multinomial logistic regression models with interaction terms and explored preference heterogeneity. The negative frame increased sensitivity to effectiveness by 18% (p = 0.04) and sensitivity to cumulative effectiveness over 3 years was 10% less than over 1 year (p = 0.01). Preferences were heterogenous with respect to attributes but not framing effects. Attribute framing substantially affected preferences for effectiveness, and decisions around risk presentation should be reported transparently.

We study the effect of framing informational campaigns scientifically or emotionally on the vaccination uptake of recipients with different educational backgrounds. 7616 Swedish mothers stratified by education received a leaflet on their children's upcoming HPV vaccination opportunity. The leaflet's framing was randomized between emotional and scientific, whereas the content remained uniform; control units received an uninformative reminder of the same length. We find substantial heterogeneity by educational background. Mothers with compulsory schooling exposed to scientific framing increased their uptake by 5.7 percentage points (7.25%). The effect was driven by less skeptical mothers with little previous HPV knowledge and higher engagement with the materials. Emotional framing decreased uptake by 4.8 percentage points (5.41%) among high school-educated mothers who read more superficially and were more hesitant at baseline.

This paper studies the impact of stronger employer responsibilities for facilitating work resumption of sick or disabled workers on employers' workplace accommodation efforts during sick leave. We exploit a reform in the Netherlands that altered experience rating—that is, shifting the costs of sick leave and disability insurance to the firm—both for permanent and non-permanent employees. Using unique Dutch survey data on workplace accommodation of long-term sick-listed workers, we show that experience rating has no significant impact on accommodation efforts. Moreover, we provide evidence that the reform led to more firms opting for self-arranging both the sick leave benefits and the reintegration process of sick non-permanent workers, instead of using the public insurance scheme.