About the conference

This year's Essen Health Conference took place for the fifteenth time from May 22 to May 24. Organizers Martin Karlsson (University of Duisburg-Essen) and Therese Nilsson (University of Lund) hosted the conference at the traditional venue Essener Hof, offering over 40 scientists the opportunity to discuss the latest research in health economics.

A highlight of the conference were the presentations by keynote speakers Casper Worm Hansen (University of Copenhagen), Carol Propper (University of Bristol, Imperial College London), Anupam Jena (Harvard Medical School) and Johanna Rickne (Stockholm University). Their contributions to current research topics such as “The Historical Mortality Transition” were appreciated by the scientific audience and discussed afterwards.

This year's conference was once again organized with the help of the health economics research center CINCH, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This year's conference was financially supported by the Kulturstiftung Essen, for which we would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks. We would also like to thank mcEmpirics, which once again supported the conference financially this year. We also express our special thanks to the Förderverein Universität Duisburg-Essen e.V., whose generous financial support made this year's conference possible.

Keynote Speakers

• Casper Worm Hansen, University of Copenhagen
• Carol Propper, University of Bristol, Imperial College London
• Anupam Jena, Harvard Medical School
• Johanna Rickne, Stockholm University

Scientific Committee

• Alex Chan, Harvard University
• Davide Dragone, University of Bologna 
• Orla Doyle, University College Dublin 
• 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
• Jenny Williams, University of Melbourne
• Nicolas Ziebarth, Cornell University

sponsored by

The most outstanding studies were honored with the Best Paper Award. Three projects prevailed among the very high-quality submissions. Cristóbal Otero (Columbia Business School) and his co-author Pablo Muñoz were able to secure first place with the study “Managers and Public Hospital Performance”.

Second place went to Elin Molin (Lund University) with the title “Severe Health Shocks and Financial Well-Being”, in collaboration with Kaveh Majlesi (Monash University) and Paula Roth (Stockholm School of Economics).

Manuela Puente-Beccar (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn) and her co-author Jérôme Adda (Bocconi University) were awarded third place with their project “Health Beliefs and the Long Run Effects of Medical Information”.