Incentives and Choice in Health Care

A vast body of empirical evidence has accumulated demonstrating that incentivesaffect health care choices made by both consumers and suppliers of health care services. Decisionsin health care are affected by many types of incentives, such as the rate of return pharmaceuticalmanufacturers expect on their investments in research and development, or disincentives, such asincreases in copayments patients must make when they visit physicians or are admitted to hospitals.In this volume, leading scholars in health economics review these new and important results anddescribe their own recent research assessing the role of incentives in health care markets anddecisions people make that affect their personal health. The contexts include demanddecisions--choices made by individuals about health care services they consume and the healthinsurance policies they purchase--and supply decisions made by medical students, practicingphysicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Researchers and students of healtheconomics and policy makers will find this book a valuable resource, both for learning economicconcepts, particularly as they apply to health care, and for reading up-to-date summaries of theempirical evidence. General readers will find the book's chapters accessible, interesting, anduseful for gaining an understanding of the likely effects of alternative health carepolicies.ContributorsHenry J. Aaron, Ernst R. Berndt, John Cawley, Julie M. Donohue, DonnaGilleskie, Brian R. Golden, Gautam Gowrisankaran, Chee-Ruey Hsieh, Hirschel Kasper, Thomas G.McGuire, Joseph P. Newhouse, Sean Nicholson, Mark V. Pauly, Anna D. Sinaiko, Frank SloanFrank A.Sloan is J. Alexander McMahon Professor of Health Policy and Management and Professor of Economicsat Duke University. He is the coauthor of The Price of Smoking (MIT Press, 2004) and author oreditor of many other books on health economics. Hirschel Kasper is Professor of Economics at OberlinCollege.

Hirschel Kasper is Professor of Economics at Oberlin College.