Syllabus

Readings:

0. Preliminary: Learning to write good

• Lanham, Richard, “Who’s Kicking Who?” Chapter 1 in Revising Business Prose. Charles Scribner and Sons (1999).

1. Models of Consumption and Saving with Uninsured Health Expenditures

• Hubbard, Glenn, Jonathan Skinner, and Stephen Zeldes, “Social Insurance and Precautionary Saving,” Journal of Political Economy (April 1995).
• Scholz, John Karl, Ananth Seshadri, and Surachai Khitatrakun, “Are Americans Saving ‘Optimally’ for Retirement?” Journal of Political Economy 114 2006: 607-43.
• Smith, James P., “Consequences and Predictors of New Health Events,” in D. Wise (ed.) Advances in the Economics of Aging. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

2. Health over the Life Cycle

• Hall, Robert E. and Jones, Charles I. (2007). "The Value of Life and the Rise in Health Spending," Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (1):39-72.
• Murphy, Kevin M. and Topel, Robert H. (2006). "The Value of Health and Longevity," Journal of Political Economy 114 (5):871-904.
• Grossman, Michael, “The Human Capital Model,” in Handbook of Health Economics, eds., Anthony J. Culyer and Joseph P. Newhouse, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2000 (Selected sections).
• Case, Ann and Angus Deaton, “Broken Down by Work and Sex: How Our Health Declines,” in D. Wise (ed.) Advances in the Economics of Aging. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Finkelstein, Amy, Erzo Luttmer, and Matthew Notowidigdo, “What Good is Wealth without Health? The Effect of Health on the Marginal Utility of Consumption,” NBER Working Paper No. 14089, 2008 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14089.

3. The health care production function in the long & short run

• Cutler, David, Angus Deaton, and Adriana Lleras-Muney, “The Determinants of Mortality,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20(3), Summer 2006: 97-120.
• Garber, Alan, and Jonathan Skinner, “Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient?” Journal of Economic Perspectives Fall 2008 22(4): 27-50.
  

4. Case study: Have we won the war on prostate cancer?*

• Cutler, David M. "Are We Finally Winning the War on Cancer?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2008 22(4): 3–26.
• Preston, Samuel H, and Jessica Y. Ho, “How Low Life Expectancy In The United States: Is The Health Care System At Fault?” NBER Working Paper 15213, 2009 http://www.nber.org/papers/w15213 .
• Bill-Axelson, Anna, Lars Holmberg, Mirja Ruutu, et al., ”Radical Prostatectomy versus Watchful Waiting in Early Prostate Cancer,” New England Journal of Medicine 352(19) May 12, 2005: 1977-1984.
• Andriole GL et al., “Mortality Results from a Randomized Prostate-Cancer Screening Trial” New England Journal of Medicine 2009; 360(13): 1310-19.
• Schroder FH et al., “Screening and Prostate-Cancer Mortality in a Randomized European Study” New England Journal of Medicine 2009;360 (13): 1320-28.
• Barry MJ, “Screening for Prostate Cancer — The Controversy That Refuses to Die”. New England Journal of Medicine 2009 360;(13): 1351-1354.

*CLASS NOTES: Health and Wealth over the Life Cycle

5. How important is health care in explaining longevity and health functioning

• Almond, D, JJ Doyle Jr, AE Kowalski, H Williams, “Estimating Marginal Returns to Medical Care: Evidence from At-Risk Newborns,” NBER Working Paper No. 14522, 2008 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14522. Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
• Card, David, Carlos Dobkin, Nicole Maestas, “Does Medicare Save Lives?” Quarterly Journal of Economics May 2009, Vol. 124, No. 2: 597–636.
• Fisher ES, Wennberg DE, Stukel TA, Gottlieb DJ, Lucas FL, Pinder EL. "The implications of regional variations in Medicare spending. Part 1: the content, quality, and accessibility of care." Annals of Internal Medicine. Mar 18 2003;138(4):273-287.
• Fisher ES, Wennberg DE, Stukel TA, Gottlieb DJ, Lucas FL, Pinder EL. "The implications of regional variations in Medicare spending. Part 2: health outcomes and satisfaction with care." Annals of Internal Medicine. Mar 18 2003;138(4):288-298.
• Doyle, Joseph J, Jr, “Returns to Local-Area Health Care Spending: Using Health Shocks to Patients Far from Home,” May 2009. http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/doyle_vacation_aer_may2009.pdf
• Gawande, Atul, “The Cost Conundrum,” The New Yorker, June 1, 2009.
• Anthony, Denise L., M. Brooke Herndon, Patricia M. Gallagher, et al., “How Much do Patient Preferences Contribute to Resource Use?” Health Affairs May/June 2009; 28(3): 864-73.
• Sirovich Brenda, Patricia M. Gallagher, David E. Wennberg, Elliott Fisher, “Discretionary decision making by primary care physicians and the cost of U.S. health care,” Health Affairs 2008; 27(3): 813-23.
• Chandra, Amitabh and Douglas Staiger."Productivity Spillovers in Health Care: Evidence from the Treatment of Heart Attacks."Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 115, February 2007: 103-140.
• Skinner, Jonathan and Douglas Staiger "Technology Diffusion and Productivity Growth in Health Care.", NBER Working Paper 14865, April 2009, http://www.nber.org/papers/w14865.

6. Technology Growth and Health Care Cost Growth

• Finkelstein, Amy, "The Aggregate Effects of Health Insurance: Evidence from the Introduction of Medicare," Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2007.
• Chandra, Amitabh, and Jonathan Skinner, “Technology Growth and Expenditure Growth in U.S. Health Care,” September 2009.
• Baicker, Katherine, and Jonathan Skinner, “How Much Should the United States Spend on Health Care?” mimeo, November 2009.

Presentations from class:

Tuesday, Sept 22