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Priority Setting In Health Care: Disentangling Risk Aversion From Inequality Aversion

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  • Luciana Echazu
  • Diego Nocetti

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a tractable social welfare function that is rich enough to disentangle attitudes towards risk in health outcomes from attitudes towards health inequalities across individuals. Given this preference specification, we evaluate how the introduction of uncertainty over the severity of illness and over the effectiveness of treatments affects the optimal allocation of healthcare resources. We show that the way in which uncertainty affects the optimal allocation within our proposed specification may differ sharply from that in the standard expected utility framework. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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  • Luciana Echazu & Diego Nocetti, 2013. "Priority Setting In Health Care: Disentangling Risk Aversion From Inequality Aversion," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(6), pages 730-740, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:22:y:2013:i:6:p:730-740
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.2858
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    Cited by:

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    2. Arthur E. Attema & Olivier L’Haridon & Gijs Kuilen, 2023. "An experimental investigation of social risk preferences for health," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 95(3), pages 379-403, October.
    3. Da Costa, Shaun & O’Donnell, Owen & Van Gestel, Raf, 2024. "Distributionally sensitive measurement and valuation of population health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    4. Attema, Arthur E. & L'Haridon, Olivier & van de Kuilen, Gijs, 2023. "Decomposing social risk preferences for health and wealth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    5. Ignacio Abásolo & Aki Tsuchiya, 2013. "Inequality and Risk Aversion in Health and Income: An Empirical Analysis Using Hypothetical Scenarios with Losses," Working Papers 2013005, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    6. Claudio Bonilla & Marcos Vergara, 2022. "New results on precautionary saving and nonlinear risks," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 136(2), pages 177-189, July.
    7. Tao Yuqing & Cheng Wen & Zou Sijie, 2018. "Priority Setting in Health Care with Disease and Treatment Risks," Journal of Systems Science and Information, De Gruyter, vol. 6(6), pages 552-562, December.

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