A new paper by Martin Karlsson -- The Rise of Health Economics: Transforming the Landscape of Economic Research -- has been accepted in Health Economics. The study, which is joint work with Lorenz Gschwent (UDE), Björn Hammarfelt (University of Borås, Sweden) and Mathias Kifmann (Hamburg University) examines how health economics has grown from a niche field to a prominent area within economics over the past 30 years. 
Using bibliometric analysis and natural language processing to classify publications, the paper shows that this rise is driven by innovative, high-quality research, with distinct subfields emerging over time. It also finds that while health economics papers rate highly for quality, they receive comparatively fewer citations than other economics fields. Pandemic-related research saw a temporary citation boost but was not systematically more novel or impactful. 
The study provides new insights into the development of health economics and the factors behind its increasing influence. A working paper version is available here.