Co-sponsored by Peking University Institute for Global Health and Development, and the Asia Health Policy Program

We study a commons problem in the context of the emergency ambulance service in Tokyo. Emergency ambulance service is free in Japan, and no one is excluded from using it. Because capacity is limited, individually rational ambulance use may delay the use by others, lowering the chance of survival. The Fire Department urges the proper use of ambulances to save lives that can be saved, but little is known about the extent of the negative consumption externality. In this paper, we first estimate how one's ambulance use affects others with respect to arrival delays and survival rates. Then, we analyze the impact of potential remedies that alter non-excludability and rivalry in ambulance use.

Toshiaki Iizuka is a Professor at Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo. His research interests are in the field of health economics and industrial organization. He has written articles on incentive and information in the healthcare markets, which appeared in leading economics journals, including American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Dr. Iizuka currently serves as Associate Editor of Journal of Health Economics and a member of the Central Social Insurance Medical Council, a council of the Japanese Health Ministry that determines provider payments and drug prices. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Co-sponsored by Peking University Institute for Global Health and Development, and the Asia Health Policy Program

Digitization in healthcare coupled with advances in artificial intelligence and other so-called "4th Industrial Revolution" technologies are enabling a radical shift in how healthcare is delivered. Few places are attempting to integrate these into healthcare as rapidly as China. This talk will discuss China's comparative advantage in healthcare digitization and lay out a research agenda for the economics of digital health. While these technologies bring potential to improve access to high- quality care and lower costs, unintended consequences and effects on healthcare markets are underexplored. Evidence on these issues is needed to inform policy and better harness these technologies for population health. Specific applications will be drawn from ongoing research in China and elsewhere.

Sean Sylvia is an Assistant Professor of health economics at UNC. His primary research interest is in the delivery of healthcare in China and other middle-income countries. Working with multidisciplinary teams of collaborators, he conducts large-scale population-based surveys and randomized trials to develop and test new approaches to provide healthcare to the poor and marginalized. His recent work focuses on the use of information technology to expand access to quality healthcare.

The combination of COVID-19 and global uncertainties — from wars, cost-of-living crises, high cross-national public debts, and impending global recession — creates new challenges for affordable access to new medicines around the world. Using insights from his research on price regulation, incentives for innovation, and universal health coverage in global bio-pharmaceutical markets, Chirantan Chatterjee will consider how the future may unravel for affordable access to new medicines in the Global North and South.

Chirantan Chatterjee is an applied microeconomist and a Reader in the Economics of Innovation at the University of Sussex. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Visiting Faculty, IIM Ahmedabad, India. His research interests are in the economics of innovation, pharmaceutical economics, and global health. He has published in top peer-reviewed journals like Management Science, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Research Policy, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Environmental Economics & Management and Social Science & Medicine among others. His new co-edited book on Covid-19 and Grand Challenges for Health, Innovation and Economy is forthcoming in 2023 with World Scientific. Chatterjee's research has in the past been supported by the NSF during his dissertation work at Carnegie Mellon University from where he obtained his PhD in 2011. His current research is supported by the Wellcome Trust India Alliance & Johns Hopkins Alliance for a Healthy World. Chatterjee has also consulted for the United Nations, World Bank, and the World Health Organization on Covid-19, Universal Health Coverage, and Incentives for Medical Innovation. View more on his personal website at www.chirantanchatterjee.com.

Register: bit.ly/3FTrJhg

Incentives for health behaviors are an increasingly important policy tool in both developed and developing countries, and there is widespread interest in improving their effectiveness. However, different contracts are likely to be more effective for different people. Mechanism design offers two strategies to improve contract effectiveness—tagging on observables (i.e., 3rd-degree price discrimination), and offering a menu of contract choices (i.e., 2nd-degree price discrimination)—but a key concern with both is that participants with private information might self-select into contracts that are favorable to the agent but less effective from the perspective of the principal. We adapt each of these strategies to customize incentive contracts for walking. Using a randomized controlled trial among more than 5,000 adults in urban India, we show that both mechanisms increase physical activity, leading to a 75% increase in steps walked relative to the effect of a one-size-fits-all benchmark. Moreover, we find that the concern that participants will self-select into less effective contracts is not only misplaced, but exactly backwards. Instead, a common force in health behavior settings—commitment motives—leads agents to prefer more effective contracts under both mechanisms. In particular, sophisticated time-inconsistent agents demand contracts that commit their future selves to walk more, bringing their preferences in partial alignment with the principal and improving the effectiveness of customization.

 

Ariel Zucker is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at UC Santa Cruz. Her research studies policies to improve health and environmental conditions among underserved communities worldwide. Many of her projects focus on countering behavioral biases in personal decision making. Prior to arriving in Santa Cruz, Dr. Zucker did a postdoc at UC Berkeley ARE, and earned her Ph.D. in economics from MIT.

Register: bit.ly/3UHwDTF

Co-sponsored by Peking University and the Asia Health Policy Program

Time cost of healthcare is important but is largely overlooked in the literature. This paper investigates how time cost affects the healthcare usage in both China and the US. Using the retirement age policy in both countries, we first employ a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) and show that the hospitalization rate persistently increases by 20-30 percent just after retirement age. The effects are larger and more significant among the people with higher time costs prior to retirement. Then, we use the school starting date and provide further significant evidence of the impact of time cost on hospitalization among the age-eligible children. These results underline the remarkable impact of time cost on healthcare usage and provide a more comprehensive picture of moral hazard in health insurance.

Dr HUANG Wei is an Associate Professor at the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University. Previously, he was an assistant professor at Emory University and National University of Singapore. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 2016. His research fields include public economics, labor economics, and health economics. His research work has been published in journals such as Review of Economic and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Nature, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, etc. He is a co-editor for Economics of Transition.