About the conference

The fourteenth Essen Health Conference was held from May 25th to May 27th. The conference was hosted by Martin Karlsson from the University of Duisburg-Essen and Therese Nilsson from Lund University. It took place at the renowned Essener Hof, providing a platform for over 40 researchers to engage in scientific discourse and sharing their most recent advancements in the field of health economics.

The focal point of the conference was the series of lectures delivered by prominent keynote speakers, including Orla Doyle from University College Dublin, Jonathan Kolstad from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, Lisa Cameron from the University of Melbourne, and Mark Hoekstra from Texas A&M University. The scientific community expressed appreciation for their contributions to ongoing research areas, such as risky behaviour in the developing world, which subsequently sparked discussions among scholars.

This year, Maksym Obrizan, a visiting scholar at the University of Duisburg-Essen and affiliated with the Kyiv School of Economics, delivered a concise talk on the conflict in Ukraine. Obrizan has maintained a longstanding collaboration with CINCH. He has engaged in several humanitarian help initiatives, which he delivered through internet platforms. It was intriguing to observe the subsequent progress following the successful fundraising efforts for the humanitarian initiatives at the 2022 conference.

“The opportunity to engage in direct interactions with both junior and seasoned researchers has immense value in terms of my own growth and progress within the scientific field. The scientific discourse had a notably high level of quality” describes Kai Miele his experience of the conference. “The conference's diverse range of presenting themes serve as sources of inspiration for novel ideas and collaborations”.

The conference was once again organised through a fruitful collaboration between Therese Nilsson from Lund University and Martin Karlsson from the University of Duisburg-Essen, with the assistance of the health economics research centre CINCH, which receives funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. We would like to express our gratitude to the Kulturstiftung Essen and mcEmpirics for their generous financial contribution, which played a pivotal role in enabling the realisation of this year's conference.

Keynote Speakers

• Lisa Cameron, University of Melbourne
• Orla Doyle, University College Dublin
• Mark Hoekstra, Texas A&M University
• Jonathan Kolstad, University of California, Berkeley

Scientific Committee

• Davide Dragone, University of Bologna 
• Amanda Gaulke, Kansas State University
• Martin Halla, Johannes Kepler University Linz
• Martin Karlsson, University of Duisburg-Essen
• Jesse Matheson, University of Leicester
• Teresa Molina, University of Hawaii
• Therese Nilsson, Lund University
• Krista Ruffini, Georgetown University
• Martin Salm, Tilburg University
• Hans Sievertsen, University of Bristol
• Jenny Williams, University of Melbourne
• Nicolas Ziebarth, Cornell University

sponsored by

The most excellent studies were awarded with the Best Paper Award. Among all high-quality submissions three projects did prevail.

Elena Ashtari Tafti (University College London) was the winner with the study “Technology, Skills, and Performance: The Case of Robots in Surgery”.

The second place was conferred to Hitoshi Shigeoka (Simon Fraser University) with the title “Education and Late-life Mortality: Evidence from School Reform in Japan”, co-authored with Kazuya Masuda (Gakushuin University) und Ryuichi Tanaka (The University of Tokyo).

Kenneth Kjaer Wejse (Aarhus University) received the third place with his project “The Dynamics of Health Across Socioeconomic Groups”, co-authored by Yunus Emre (Aarhus University) and Malene Kallestrup-Lamb (Aarhus University).