
Erik Schokkaert +info
University of Leuven, Bélgica
Erik Schokkaert is full professor of welfare economics and health economics at the Department of Economics of the KULeuven. He chairs the interdisciplinary think tank “Metaforum” of the KULeuven. He is also faculty member and former Research Director of CORE (Université catholique de Louvain) and has been visiting professor at the London School of Economics and at the Universid ICESI in Cali.
His research focuses on (a) the modelling of different concepts of distributive justice; (b) the concept of individual well-being and quality of life; (c) the application of these concepts for the analysis of specific policy problems in the fields of health, social security and taxation.
He published (among others) in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Demography, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Social Choice and Welfare, Economics and Philosopy, European Economic Review, Health Policy, Economica. Together with Wulf Gaertner he wrote a book on Empirical Social Choice: Questionnaire-Experimental Studies on Distributive Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Presentation title and abstract
JUSTICE IN HEALTH: HOW TO MEASURE INEQUALITY OF WHAT?
I will discuss two arguments that have been used to justify inequalities in health. The first relates to the notion of individual responsibility for lifestyle. I will describe the methodological and ethical challenges raised by the empirical work on equality of opportunity. In a deterministic world, it is not meaningful to hold individuals responsible for what is “under their control”. Equality of opportunity means giving everybody equal chances to realize what they themselves consider to be important in life. This brings me to the second argument: what matters from an equity point of view is not health but individual well-being. If one accepts that “authentic” individual preferences should be respected in measuring individual well-being, happiness and subjective satisfaction have to be discarded as attractive measures of individual well-being. I propose the notion of “equivalent income” as a better alternative and show how it can be made operational in a health setting.

Karen Bloor +info
University of York, Reino Unido
Karen Bloor is Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the University of York, and Research Champion for Health and Wellbeing, working to catalyse interdisciplinary research across the University. Her research has focused particularly on the application of economics to health policy, covering a range of subjects relating to the financing and organisation of healthcare, including analysis of medical labour markets, medical practice variations, pharmaceutical markets and various aspects of healthcare reform.
Working jointly with the King’s Fund, Karen co-leads the Partnership for Responsive Policy Analysis and Research (PREPARE), funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. This research programme aims to improve the quality of evidence upon which strategic health policy decisions are based, by providing short-term responsive research, expert advice, policy briefings and empirical and theoretical analysis.
Karen’s other recent research projects focus particularly on the health care workforce (general practitioners in the emergency department (GPED), medical revalidation, nurse staffing and outcomes, and values based recruitment).
Presentation title and abstract
Informing health policy with economic thinking and evidence
Policy should ideally be informed by rigorous evidence, but political constraints and differences in perspective mean that, in the words of George Stigler, “reform and research seldom march arm in arm”. In this presentation, Karen Bloor will reflect on over 25 years of working to inform health policy with economic thinking and evidence, outlining past, present and future challenges of and opportunities for using economics to improve population health and care.
