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Jonathan Siverskog

Analyst

When is a new drug too expensive? The topic of my research is the opportunity cost of health spending. How much health could have been gained, had we instead devoted the resources to, e.g., reducing waiting lists or providing more hospital beds?

Opportunity cost in economic evaluation

The resources available for the public provision of health care are not unlimited. Cost-effectiveness evidence on new healthcare interventions can help us prioritise in order to use scarce resources wisely, but to interpret cost-effectiveness evidence, it may appear as if we must make trade-offs between life and money.

This is not so. If we are able to quantify the health improvements that resources would or could have generated in alternative use, a decision about providing or denying treatment can instead be framed as a trade-off between health gained and health forgone.

In my research, I seek to provide a more robust basis for this way of reporting and interpreting cost-effectiveness evidence.

Education

  • B.Sc. in Political Sciences, 2013
  • M.Sc. in Economics, 2015
  • Ph.D. in Medical Sciences, 2022

Teaching

I teach econometrics at the Master Programme in Economics.

Publications

2023

2022

News

Research affiliation

Organisation