The course covers the role of social and monetary incentives in modifying related health behavior, and especially prevention and health care use. It draws on theoretical frameworks from several social sciences including applied microeconomics and behavioral economics, psychology, and sociology to provide an integrated framework about how to think about incentives in health and health care. The course will extend health economics teaching to cover quasi-rational behavior and behavioral economics issues, and it will primarily focus on non-experimental evidence, although it will sometimes draw from policy and quasi-experiments. Its main purpose will be to discuss key theoretical and empirical insights to guide the design of health and health care policies.

The course will focus on the following issues: Quasi-rational actor and motivation. Risk-benefit decision-making framework. Monetary and non-monetary incentives.  Esteem, Stigma. Obesity and payments. Monetary Incentives, co-payment design, Social Incentives.  Reference Points. Risk preferences and perceptions. Locus of Control and Health and Health Care Behavior. Anchoring and social cues. Taxes and Health: the role of Sin Taxes. Subsidies and Health: the role of conditional cash transfers. Myopia and Insurance Purchase: the case of long-term care insurance. Defaults and Presumed Consent. Motivation Crowding-Out and organ Donation. Information provision: risk information campaigns on food labelling, GM food. Stigma and Esteem: Smoking, Obesity. Cultural economics of health and health care: the role of traditional medicines. Body Self-Identity and Anorexia. Sleep and working time trade-off. Media, narratives and health-related behavior. Culture, social norms: use of traditional medicine. Identity and blood donation, Food disorders. Health Inequality Aversion and Attitudes to Health Care. Behavioral incentives private and public health insurance design.