What is economics? Somewhat close to Freakonomics

From a clinician perspective, having a lecture on applied microeconomics scheduled was both frightening and exciting. All these new terms, graphs, formulas. But in my heart, I knew I'd like it. All these new terms, graphs, formulas...

In fact, the lecturer got my full attention (and comprehension...) when he reminded me how the «study» of incentives is intrinsically part of economics. His example of a day care center fining parents for being late to pick up their kids was mentioned in Freakonomics as the first example of how incentives motivate people. And I had a great fun reading the book this summer as a very informal introduction to economics while discovering «What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers have in common?», or «What makes a perfect parent?» ...

From either a clinical or a managerial point of view, incentives are in large part responsible for successes and failure. Incentives, both positive and negative, are everywhere and motivate people's behavior 24 hours a day (maybe not that much during sleep). For example, if a patient was prescribed pills which he decides not to take (a lot of NHS prescriptions and/or pills end up in the bin or the drain), maybe the clinician didn't choose the right set of incentives to motivate «his» patient. Or if a manager's attempt to implement a medical information system fails after careful consideration on planning, probably he didn't choose the right set of incentives to motivate the end-user. Especially if the end-user is a clinician...

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The lecture mentioned previously started with the stand-up economist as an introduction. Here it is again if you don't remember the 10 principles of economics...



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We are in the process of developing an infrastructure to share the courses notes, books summaries, podcast of lectures and readings, bibliographies, and our favourite restaurants... But here are my notes for the first 2 health economics lectures (reading 1, reading 2).

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By the way, I bought Strategic Planning for Information System and The Economics of Health care. If you are looking for Distributing Health Care for the Course on Applied Micro-Economics, note that the postal strike might delay the delivery of your order on online bookstores...