Abstract
Health care expenditures form an ever-increasing burden in most developed countries, especially the United States, where they accounted for 16.0 per cent of GDP in 2004, up from 5.1 per cent of GDP in 1960. These cost increases alone suggest that health economics is a dynamic field of economic research, but the importance and the interest of the field are driven by broader considerations. This article delineates important market failures and research issues in health and health care, the relationship between income and health, methodological issues in the measurement of health, and quality issues in the measurement of health care.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Rashi Fein, Robert Haveman, John Mullahy, Nathan Tefft and Jason Fletcher for helpful suggestions.
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Wolfe, B. (2018). Health Economics. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_844
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_844
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