The Essen Health Conference.

Where Health meets Labour and Education Economics.

May 28 - May 29, 2021

- Virtual Edition -

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For further information, please see the Call for Papers.

The Essen Health Conference 2021 took place on the 28th and 29th of May. Over 40 international scientists were able to discuss their current research under the theme “Where Health meets Labour and Education Economics”. Due to the digital infrastructure that the University of Duisburg-Essen was able to expand over the last year, the virtual version of the conference was a great success.

As usual, internationally well-known keynote speakers were invited, who enriched the professional exchange of the conference with their highly valuable contributions. Costas Meghir (Yale University) gave a lecture on interventions and mechanisms in child development, while Michèle Tertilt (University of Mannheim) and Andrea Ichino (University of Bologna) gave an overview of their current research in relation to epidemics (HIV, COVID). Katrine Vellsen Løken (Norwegian School of Economics) presented the results of her work on mental health in prisons.

In recent years, it was established to not only invite health economic research to the conference, but to open the discourse to related disciplines, such as labour and education economics. One important aspect of the conference is to pay attention to the promotion of young scientists. Therefore, not only experienced and well known scientists have the opportunity to present and discuss their work, but also doctoral students, who are able to benefit from the highly qualified feedback to their work.

This year’s conference was again organized in collaboration between Therese Nilsson from the University of Lund and Martin Karlsson from the University of Duisburg-Essen. The conference is also supported by the health economic research centre CINCH, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The Essen Health Conference 2021 received financial support from the Kulturstiftung Essen, for which we would like to take this opportunity to thank them once again.

The Essen Health Conference will again take place in May 2022. The organizers hope to join scientists from all over the world in Essen, in order to use this opportunity to further establish Essen as an important location for health economic research.

Best Paper Award:

This year's Best Paper Award winner was Damian de Walque (The World Bank) with his paper "How to encourage service delivery to the poor: Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic incentives, and effort". Sheheryar Banuri, Philip Keefer and Paul Jacob Robyn are co-authors of the paper.

The second place was conferred to Rita Ginja (University of Bergen, IZA) with her paper “School health programs: education, health, and welfare dependency of young adults”. Her paper was co-authored by Signe A. Abrahamsen and Julie Riise.