E-Book Overview
From Abscissa, through to the World Health Organization, this expansive Dictionary comprehensively covers the field of health economics and closely related fields including epidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, demography, medical sociology, medical statistics and bio-statistics, health policy, health administration and health service management, public health medicine and qualitative and quantitative research. Entries and definitions are provided for all key concepts listed with, in many cases, more extended entries on core or controversial ideas. Anthony Culyer has amassed a wealth of information and facts within these pages, and yet has not been reluctant to include comment on issues and ideas. This makes the Dictionary eminently readable and all the more interesting. This is a unique reference work and as such, The Dictionary of Health Economics will be a valuable reference tool for a wide audience encompassing not just health economists, but many specialists and researchers in other fields (social sciences and beyond) as well as with policymakers.
E-Book Content
The Dictionary of Health Economics
The Dictionary of Health Economics
Anthony J. Culyer University of York, UK and Chief Scientist, Institute for Work & Health, Toronto, Canada
Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Anthony J. Culyer 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited Glensanda House Montpellier Parade Cheltenham Glos GL50 1UA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. 136 West Street Suite 202 Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Culyer, A. J. (Anthony J.) The dictionary of health economics / Anthony J. Culyer. p. cm. Includes index. 1. Medical economics—Dictionaries. I. Title. RA410.A3C85 2005 362.1'03—dc22 2005041563
ISBN 1 84376 208 0 (cased) Typeset by Manton Typesetters, Louth, Lincolnshire, UK. Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments Conventions
vii xi xiii
The Dictionary of Health Economics
1
Index
377
v
PREFACE Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it. (Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson)
This is a book serving the second of these two kinds of knowledge, a book that I have intended that the reader should be able to dip into from time to time. I hope it may also serve that other thing with which knowledge is so often mistaken: understanding. If one’s appetite is whetted, as I hope may occasionally be the case, there are loads of decent texts that provide solid main courses and desserts. The Dictionary is not intended to compete with them. My main hope is that it may be of use to the reader in a hurry (whether a beginning economist or someone who needs to understand what economists go on about), who wants a reminder about a topic or who wants a quick and relatively painless introduction to it. It would be great if, to borrow from Sir Topham Hat (the Fat Controller in Thomas the Tank Engine), the Dictionary were to be a ‘really useful engine’. Health economists, to a greater extent than most economists, have engaged in close collaborations with specialists in other fields (not only other social sciences) and with policy makers, especially in the area of health technology assessment. I hope, therefore, that the book may be useful to these ‘others’. Multidisciplinarity and multiprofessionality also have a conse