Behavioural economics has become a popular research field. It combines economic science with insights from other disciplines, especially psychology and sociology. It originated from the repeated finding that several assumptions in traditional economic theory are violated in empirical studies. Among the main falsifications are the assumptions of rationality and self-regarding behaviour. It has now widely been acknowledged that economic agents often deviate from neoclassical economic predictions in systematic ways. This occurs, among others, in choice under risk, choice over time, and social choice. One area where behavioural economics is particularly relevant is healthcare. As such, conducting behavioural experiments in health has developed as an emerging research area.
Research at the frontier of science that improves methodology and informs policymaking
We contribute to a better understanding of individual and societal health-related decision making, in order to advance scientific knowledge and to inform policymakers how to better allocate scarce healthcare resources and to encourage a healthier lifestyle. This is accomplished by performing theoretical and experimental studies, aiming to develop and test new research methodologies and to measure people’s preferences for health and healthcare as accurately as possible. Examples of our research topics include the measurement of debiased utility of health states, eliciting risk and time preferences in health-related choices, and the trade-off between the amount of health gains and its distribution amongst society. We collaborate with researchers worldwide (e.g. in the Behavioral Experiments in Health Network – BEHnet) and regularly meet researchers, policymakers and NGOs to discuss our findings and ideas. Moreover, we are heavily involved in ESHPM’s teaching program. We teach the 15 EC international Minor course “Analyzing and Changing Unhealthy Behavior”, which is available to all students both from Erasmus University and other national and foreign universities, and the EuHEM and HEPL Master course “Behavioral Decision Theory in Health”. In these courses, as well as summer schools, we disseminate the most recent research on behavioural health economics to a large international group of highly motivated students and PhD candidates.
We have recently published about
Improving health valuation methodology
- A.E. Attema, W.B.F. Brouwer & O. L'Haridon (2013). Prospect theory in the health domain: A quantitative assessment. Journal of Health Economics, 32, 1057-1065.
- S.A. Lipman, W.B.F. Brouwer & A.E. Attema (2019). QALYs without bias? Non-parametric correction of time trade-off and standard gamble weights based on prospect theory. Health Economics, 28 (7), 843-854.
Time preferences for health
- A.E. Attema, H. Bleichrodt, Y. Gao, Z. Huang & P.P. Wakker (2016). Measuring Discounting without Measuring Utility. The American Economic Review, 106 (6), 1476-1494.
- A.E. Attema, H. Bleichrodt & P.P. Wakker (2012). A Direct Method for Measuring Discounting and QALYs more Easily and Reliably. Medical Decision Making, 32 (4), 583-593.
The role of subjective life expectancy in valuing health
- S.A. Lipman, W.B.F. Brouwer & A.E. Attema (2020). Living up to expectations: Experimental tests of subjective life expectancy as a reference point in time trade-off and standard gamble. Journal of Health Economics, 71, 102318.
Risk preferences for health
- A.E. Attema, O. L'Haridon & G. van de Kuilen (2019). Measuring multivariate risk preferences in the health domain. Journal of Health Economics, 64, 15-24.
Societal preferences for health
- A.E. Attema, W.B.F. Brouwer, O. L'Haridon & J.L. Pinto-Prades (2015). Estimating sign-dependent societal preferences for quality of life. Journal of Health Economics, 43, 229-243.
Researchers working on this theme
Dr. Arthur AttemaAssociate Professor
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Prof. Werner BrouwerProfessor
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Prof. Job van ExelProfessor
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Prof. Yoichiro FujiiVisiting Professor
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Dr. Stefan LipmanAssistant Professor
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Zhongyu LangPhD student
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Dr. Daniel WiesenNetwork Associate Professor
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Liying ZhangPhD student
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