Agradecemos a todos os autores que submeteram os seus trabalhos para o Prémio Pedro Pita Barros 2020. Uma palavra de agradecimento a todos os membros do júri pelo seu empenho e contributo durante um período em que todos fomos afectados pelo impacto da pandemia originada pelo SARS-CoV-2. O júri avaliou 6 artigos e o processo foi bastante competitivo, uma vez que os trabalhos submetidos foram de elevada qualidade. É com enorme prazer que anunciamos a vencedora do Prémio Pedro Pita Barros 2020: Ana Moura. O artigo submetido pela Ana Moura tem como título “‘Causes of regional variation in Dutch healthcare expenditures: Evidence from movers” publicado na Health Economics em 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.3917). O júri considerou ainda que devia ser atribuída uma menção honrosa ao Luís Sá pelo artigo “Dynamic hospital competition under rationing by waiting times” publicado no Journal of Health Economics em 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.06.005). A entrega do Prémio decorrerá em cerimónia pública durante a Conferência Nacional de Economia da Saúde, em data e local a anunciar.   A Direção da APES  

No dia 13 de Outubro às 13h00 tivemos a quarta edição do Seminário Virtual para investigadores em início de carreira (VERC). Apresentadora: Carolina Santos (Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa; Nova Health Economics & Management Knowledge Center), joint work with Eduardo Costa Título: Pricing, consumption and competition in pharmaceutical drugs: Evidence from changing drugs’ co-payments in Portugal Resumo: Reference price regimes for prescription drugs are usually implemented with the aim of curbing public expenditure with pharmaceuticals, induce drug substitution from branded to generics drugs and enhance competition. In these systems, patients co-pay the difference between the drug’s pharmacy retail price and the reimbursement level. Relying on a detailed product-level panel dataset of prescription drugs sold in Portuguese retail pharmacies, from 2016 to 2019, we evaluate the impact of a policy change in the way reference prices are computed, affecting 32% of the equivalent drug groups. We analyse the impact of such change on pricing strategies of pharmaceutical companies and on consumption. Results of a differences-in-differences analysis show that affected products – those subject to a decrease in their reference price – did not reduce their prices, which implied higher prices paid by patients. We found evidence of a 15% decline on branded drugs consumption and no statistically significant effect on generic drug consumption, with signicant heterogeneity across regions and therapeutics. Still, no evidence was found of increased competition in the groups affected by the policy change. Results suggest that NHS co-payments savings were partially achieved through higher out-of-pocket payments paid by patients, raising potential equity concerns.   Subscreva a nossa mailing list aqui. Para alguma questão pode contatar-nos através dos seguintes endereços de email: aesec@aes.es ou earlycareer@apes.pt

Aconteceu no dia 8 de setembro às 13h00 a terceira edição do Seminário Virtual para investigadores em início de carreira (VERC). Apresentadora: Paula Spinola (UCL) Título: Effect of C-section on infant health: Evidence from a rationing policy Resumo: We evaluate a rationing policy that introduced a fixed threshold to the rate of C-sections that hospitals in the public health system could perform. In a differences-in-differences empirical design, we assess whether municipalities most exposed to the policy (i.e. those with higher baseline C-section rate in the public health system) experienced a higher decrease in their overall rate of C-section and if this was followed by differences in infants’ health outcomes. More importantly, we use policy exposure as an instrument for choice of C-section in order to estimate the causal impact of C-section for infants’ health at birth as well as in their first year of life. We find that C-section increases both Apgar scores at birth and hospitalization rates of children under 1 year old. In other words, we find a positive impact of C-section in health at birth and negative impact in health within the first year of life. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the causal health effect of C-sections not only in a developing country, but in one with the highest C-section rate in the world.    Subscreva a nossa mailing list aqui. Para alguma questão pode contatar-nos através dos seguintes endereços de email: aesec@aes.es ou earlycareer@apes.pt

  (The text in English may be found at the end) Curso Pré-Workshop APES — Behavioral Experiments in Health Nos dias 24 e 25 de setembro, a APES organiza a primeira edição do Curso Pré-Workshop APES, via ZOOM. O curso tem o tema Behavioral Experiments in Health e será lecionado por Daniel Wiesen, Professor Associado de Gestão Comportamental na Saúde na Universidade de Colónia e membro da Behavioral Experiments in Health Network (BEH-Net). Neste curso, os participantes serão expostos aos fundamentos do desenho de experiências na área de Economia da Saúde Comportamental. O curso tem uma considerável componente prática. Os métodos para desenhar e implementar experiências comportamentais serão ilustrados com aplicações ao estudo do comportamento dos prestadores de cuidados de saúde; além disso, o curso incluirá um exercício que os participantes deverão resolver em grupo. No final do curso, os participantes terão reunido o conhecimento e prática necessários para se iniciarem no desenvolvimento de experiências comportamentais em saúde, assim como para analisar criticamente a literatura relevante. O curso será lecionado em Inglês. Horário do curso: 24 de setembro das 13:00 às 17:00. Inclui aula teórica e uma hora de trabalho de grupo guiado. 25 de setembro das 9:00 às 10:00. Apresentação das conclusões dos trabalhos de grupo realizados no dia anterior. *O instrutor encontra-se disponível para discutir os projetos com os grupos/participantes após o curso. Emolumentos: O curso é gratuito para os associados da APES e tem um custo de 40 euros para não-associados. Inscrição: Para se inscrever neste curso deverá enviar um e-mail para apes@apes.pt com o assunto “Inscrição no Curso Pré-Workshop” e incluir o seu nome, afiliação e indicação do estatuto de associado/não-associado. Os não-associados receberão as instruções para proceder ao pagamento da inscrição, sendo solicitado o  envio da prova de pagamento. Os interessados podem, alternativamente, tornar-se associados da APES de acordo com a informação disponível em https://apes.pt/inscricoes. Os participantes receberão o link para a sessão ZOOM na semana anterior ao curso. O prazo para inscrições é 18 de setembro. As vagas são limitadas. Qualquer questão adicional sobre o curso poderá ser enviada para earlycareer@apes.pt.   *********************************************************************************************************************   Pre-Workshop Course APES — Behavioral Experiments in Health The Portuguese Health Economics Association (Associação Portuguesa de Economia da Saúde, APES) will offer its first pre-workshop course on 24–25 September via ZOOM. This year’s edition is devoted to Behavioral Experiments in Health and will be run by Daniel Wiesen, Associate Professor in Behavioral Health Management at the University of Cologne and member of the Behavioral Experiments in Health Network (BEH-Net).. In this pre-workshop training course, participants will be exposed to the foundations of experiment design in the field of behavioral health economics. The course has a strong applied and hands-on component: methodologies for designing and conducting behavioral experiments will be illustrated with applications to provider behavior, and participants are expected to solve a brief group assignment. At the end of the course, participants will be ready to kick-start simple behavioral experiments in health and be able to assess those in the literature critically. The language of instruction is English. Course schedule and outline: 24 September: 1 pm – 5 pm GMT+1 / 2 pm – 6 pm CET (includes teaching, plus one hour of guided group work) 25 September: 9 am – 10 am GMT+1 / 10 am – 11 am CET (blitz-presentations of the groups’ ideas for behavioral experiments in health) *The instructor is available to offer follow-up to interested groups of students to guide their projects. Course fee: The course is free of charge for APES associates and costs €40 for non-associates. Registration: If you wish to register for this course, please send an e-mail to apes@apes.pt with the subject “Pre-Workshop Course Registration”, your name, affiliation, and your associate/non-associate status. If you are not currently an APES associate, you’ll be sent the bank details to pay the course fee, net of all charges, and requested to send us the proof of payment. If you instead wish to become an associate, please go to https://apes.pt/inscricoes. Participants will receive the ZOOM link to attend the course in the week prior to the event by e-mail. The registration deadline is 18 September. Participation in the course is limited to the number of places available. If you have any queries regarding the course or the registration process, please contact us at earlycareer@apes.pt.

A parceria entre a APES e a AES (congénere Espanhola) trouxe-nos dia 11 de agosto às 13h00 a segunda edição do Seminário Virtual para investigadores em início de carreira (VERC). A próxima edição será dia 8 de setembro às 13h00. Subscreva a nossa mailing list aqui. Para alguma questão pode contatar-nos através dos seguintes endereços de email: aesec@aes.es ou earlycareer@apes.pt Em baixo fica o resumo do manuscrito apresentado: Apresentadora: Andrea Salas Ortiz (University of York) Título: Accumulation and transmission of inequalities of opportunity (IOp) and the double burden of malnutrition (DBM): the case of Mexico Resumo: The term malnutrition has been wrongly used as a synonym for undernutrition, this has misled researchers and policy-makers to independently analyse under and over-nutrition problems. This short-sighted perspective has hidden the double burden of malnutrition problem that many countries are currently facing. Under a life course perspective, this paper examines the socioeconomic aspect of the problem in Mexico. Using Roemer’s inequality of opportunity (IOp) framework and a combination of matching and re-weighting techniques, a pseudo birth-cohort is constructed and IOp is measured in three nutrition-related outcomes: haemoglobin (Hb), body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). Results indicate that overall inequalities related to circumstances are higher in Hb than in BMI or WC. Under the course of life, the double burden of malnutrition is more acute. As people aged, IOp in Hb accumulate, whereas for BMI and WC inequalities decrease as people get older. When disentangling the role of circumstances and efforts towards the variation of outcomes, the results indicate that circumstances are the main driver in the likelihood to have anaemia, as well as to develop a double burden of malnutrition during adulthood. While efforts play a major role in the probability to be overweight. This paper contributes to the ongoing literature about inequality of opportunity in health by offering evidence about the unexplored relationship between accumulation and transmission of opportunities and the double burden of malnutrition in Mexico. Moreover, this paper is a first attempt to cope with the lack of panel data, a recurrent situation in many countries, to perform life-course health analysis.