This episode’s guest is Sanna Azzouz, PhD candidate in Health Technology Assessment at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She discusses her paper "Cost-effectiveness analysis of image-guided ablation versus conventional ablation in patients with recurrent ventricular tachycardia in France: results from the inEurHeart trial".

The conversation covers how ventricular tachycardia develops after myocardial infarction, the clinical and economic trade-offs between different treatment options, and how AI-based imaging can reduce procedure time and costs without compromising patient outcomes. The episode also reflects on the challenges of measuring quality of life in severe cardiac conditions and translating short-term trial results into long-term health economic insights.

In the final part, Sanna shares her experience working at the intersection of healthcare, economics, and AI, and offers personal advice for PhD students on growth, balance, and enjoying the research journey.

Guest: Sanna Azzouz, PhD Candidate, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Timestamps:

In this episode, Stefan Lipman, Assistant Professor at Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (Erasmus University Rotterdam), discusses with us how financial incentives can be used to promote healthy behaviour. The conversation covers incentive design (carrots vs. sticks), ethical and equity considerations, funding and cost-effectiveness, the role of structural determinants of health, and the sustainability of behaviour change. In the final part, he shares advice for PhD students and early-career researchers on teaching, presenting, and transitioning to a PhD in Health Economics coming from a different background.

Guest: Stefan Lipman, Assistant Professor, Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

(03:35) Stefan's research background and motivation

(06:08) Why to focus on financial incentives for healthy behaviour?

(09:52) Carrots and sticks: reward-based and loss-based designs

(14:34) Targeting and equity

(24:25) Combining financial incentives

(35:00) Structural influences on healthy behaviour

(59:57) Transitioning into a PhD in health economics coming from a different background

In this episode, we have a casual chat about Prithvi’s experience attending and presenting at the International Long-Term Care Policy Network (ILPN) 2024 Conference in Bilbao. We talk about what the conference was like, from the city to the general vibe, and what it’s like to present research to a mixed audience. More broadly, we chat about navigating big conferences solo, tips for meeting people and starting conversations, and general observations about conference culture. 

Hosts: Prithviraj Basu Mallik & Fanny Tallgren

If you would like to learn more about this conference, click here to go to the ILPN website. 

In this episode of EcoEchoes, we speak with Professor Job van Exel, a health economist, director of research at ESHPM, and the original founder of this podcast. We discuss the challenges in defining and measuring informal caregiving, especially for incorporating it into economic evaluations and then to further down the line inform policy. For example, we talk about the distinctions between objective and subjective burden, and the different assumptions and potential biases in different valuation approaches (proxy good, opportunity cost, contingent valuation, perseverance time). In the final part of the episode, Job reflects on his career trajectory, the role of luck and curiosity, and gives advice for early-stage researchers on career planning and embracing opportunities.

Guest: Job van Exel, Professor of Health Economics at Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM), Erasmus University Rotterdam

If you are interested in reading more about this topic, then this paper summarizes work done at ESHPM in terms of measuring and valuing the impact of patient interventions on informal carers. In this paper, you can learn more about the perseverance time measure, and in this paper, how to use a discrete choice experiment to determine the value of an hour of time caregiving. This paper describes how to include broader effects of caregiving in an economic evaluation of a patient intervention using a measure that is compatible with how effects are measured in patients (and the healthcare perspective). This paper shows how to estimate caregiver time using information that is typically available in clinical trials: the EQ-5D scores of patients and their gender. 

This episode’s guest is Danae Arroyos-Calvera, Associate Professor in Behavioural and Experimental Economics at the University of Birmingham. She discusses her research on cooperation, moral wiggle room, and plausible deniability in public goods games. The conversation explores the challenge of translating lab findings to policy, the importance of publishing null results, and the balance between image, incentives, and fairness in human behaviour.

Guest: Danae Arroyos-Calvera, Associate Professor, University of Birmingham

Timestamps:

In this episode, Yubraj Acharya discusses his paper ‘Reducing Non-Prescription Antibiotics Use through Community Education in Low-Income Countries’. He sheds light on the growing issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and shares about the intervention he conducted in Nepal, aimed at reducing non-prescribed antibiotic use among parents of children.

Guest: Yubraj Acharya, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Administration and Demography at Pennsylvania State University, The United States.

Hosts: Fanny Tallgren, Karen Trujillo Jara

Timestamps:

0:36 Meet our guest: Yubraj Acharya

06:00 Drivers of antibiotics use in community contexts

11:40 Series of work conducted on Antimicrobial Resistance

12:30 Components of the study intervention in Nepal

21:50 Findings 

33:10 Considerations for scaling up a similar study in other settings

37:00 Experience of living in Rotterdam

In this episode, Judith Bom and Gaia Bagnasco discuss their latest paper mapping care pathways for people in their last 6 years before death with dementia in the Netherlands. You can find the paper here. First, we talk about why studying ageing and dementia matters and how the Dutch long-term care system works. We then move on to discuss what their latent class analysis reveals about three distinct care trajectories: the late formal care group, the mixed care group and the early nursing home group. We also talk about the important roles of informal care, income, gender and the home environment in predicting these pathways. Finally, we discuss their upcoming research on dementia-friendly housing and cross-country comparisons.

Guest: Judith Bom (Assistant professor) and Gaia Bagnasco (PhD), both in health economics at the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management

Hosts: Fanny Tallgren, Dyllis De Pessemier

Mentioned resources:

Dementie in kaart 

This episode’s guest is Anna Stirner, a PhD Candidate in Health Economics at the University of Cologne. She discusses her experimental study on physicians’ use of therapeutic decision support (DS) systems in pediatric antibiotic prescribing, examining how access, effort costs, and quality incentives shape uptake and care quality. The conversation explores the challenge of antibiotic overprescription, how younger versus more experienced physicians respond to DS, and policy implications for integrating DS into clinical practice. At the end, Anna also shares her next research steps and gives advice to PhD students.

Guest: Anna Stirner, PhD Candidate, University of Cologne

Timestamps:

(00:13) Anna’s research background and interest in decision support

(02:40) Decision support systems in German healthcare

(04:01) Research design and experimental setup

(12:54) Main results: effort costs, incentives, and uptake

(15:20) Case severity, physician experience, and heterogeneity

(21:00) Policy takeaways and implementation challenges

(23:52) Future research directions and advice for PhD students

Episode Description

This episode’s guest is Vahid, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Erasmus School of Economics. His work is focused on the intersection between labor and health economics. In this episode, he presents his working paper on childhood mental health effects of early life exposure to paternal job loss. The discussion sheds light on a critical aspect of job loss and how this scenario can hit harder on families by emotional and psychological challenges.  

Guest: Vahid Moghani, Postdoctoral Researcher, Erasmus School of Economics.

Host: Fanny Tallgren

Timestamps:

(06:02) Introduction to the study: job loss and effects on people

(10:14) Details on the dataset used (e.g., sample characteristics)

(21:40) Main findings of the study related to children’s medication use

(29:51) Reflections on policy implications

(35:50) Causal random forest as an alternative method to assess heterogeneity

(42:18) Recommendations on the use of AI in the scientific field

This episode’s guest is Professor Hans van Kippersluis from Erasmus School of Economics. He discusses his working paper “Skipping your workout, again? Measuring and understanding time inconsistency in physical activity”, co-authored with Diarmaid Ó Ceallaigh and Kirsten Rohde. The paper studies time inconsistency in physical activity using survey data from the Dutch Lifelines cohort. They find that participants not only overestimate but also underestimate their future exercise. We talk about why present bias may not be the only explanation for the misalignment between intentions and behaviour, and how it may not be a stable personality trait. Hans also explains the use of choice matching to incentivise honest survey responses. Finally, we discuss how to write well-structured papers, the use of econometric methods for causal inference, and how Hans keeps up with developments in the econometrics literature.

Guest: Hans van Kippersluis, Professor of Applied Economics at Erasmus School of Economics

Timestamps:

(00:23) Introduction to Professor Hans and his research journey