HEALTH ECONOMICS

Health economics: Importance and growth, Production and allocative efficiency, distribution, and the production possibilities curve; Health care as an economic good; Wants demand and needs; Production of health and health care; Deciding who gets what in health care; Public health and economic growth

Factors affecting demand for medical care(economic and non economic); Consumer choice theory: preferences and utility, budget constraints and maximization; Demand functions: Estimating demand functions, price and income elasticity of demand; Modeling choices about health : consumption of health and health care, investment in health care, predictions of the Grossman model; Asymmetry of information and imperfect agency; Aggregate demand for health care;  Firms , markets and industries in the health care sector of the economy; Structure, conduct and performance in the health care industry; Profit maximization models: Perfect competition ,monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, Game theory; Goals other than profit maximization: Growth maximization, Behavioral theories of the firm, Utility maximization

Theory of production: Production function, isoquants, marginal products, substitutability between inputs, production frontier; Multi product firms; Returns to scale, additivity and fixed factors; Costs: costs and productivity, cost functions, economies of scale, short run cost functions, economies of scope; Using perfectly competitive markets to allocate resources: equilibrium  in competitive markets, efficiency of competitive markets; Market failure in health care: externalities, market power, public goods, information imperfections; Government intervention in health care: direct government involvement in the finance and provision of health care, taxes & subsidies, regulations, provision of information, theory of second best; Government failure

The economic foundations of economic evaluation : cost benefit analysis and cost effectiveness analysis; Economic evaluation applied to health care programmes; Equity in economic analysis; Economic evaluation methods: estimating costs, measurement of health gain, discounting, modeling based economic evaluation; The use of economic evaluation in decision making; Welfarist and non welfarist foundations in economic analysis: welfare economics, the Pareto principle, social welfare functions, the application of welfare economics, non welfarism, link between welfarism and non welfarism

Uncertainty in health care; Attitude to Risk; Demand for and supply of health insurance; The market for health insurance; Health insurance market failures; Integration between Third – Party payers and health care providers; Options for health care financing; Equity in finance of health care; Equity in distribution