"The economics of health behaviour: incentives, emotions, policy"

Public Inaugural Lecture by Armando N. Meier

Many premature deaths come from unhealthy behaviors, including smoking, drinking, or not vaccinating: For example, ensuring adequate vaccination in the next six years alone could save 16 million lives. Economists and public health researchers have long debated about policies to encourage healthy behavior and reduce negative impacts of unhealthy behavior on others. To design effective policies that address both, self-control problems and negative externalities, understanding economic drivers of health behaviors is essential. In this lecture, I will first highlight the role of emotions, heuristics, and economic preferences in risk taking and health behavior. I will then discuss the potential of incentives and nudges to change behavior, including negative impacts of paying people. Last, I will consider key emerging areas in health economics: policy adoption and personalized policy.

Armando N. Meier is tenure-track Assistant Professor of Health Economics. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of Basel in 2018, receiving the faculty prize for the best dissertation after research stays at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University. He then was a Principal Researcher at the University of Chicago and a Senior Researcher at the University of Lausanne before returning to Basel. He is currently also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. The main research and teaching activities of Armando Meier are in health economics, with strong connections to behavioral, public, and labor economics. His work has been published in journals such as Nature, Science, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, and the European Economic Review

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