Many people may feel unease when reading about Health "Economics" in general, the comparison of health outcomes to costs, or defining how much a certain health gain should cost. However, 'costs' to an economist means what will have to be sacrificed by others (such sacrifices are given unless one believes in unlimited resources).

"Anyone who says that no account should be paid to costs [in medical practice] is really saying that no account should be paid to the sacrifices imposed on others. I cannot see on what ethical grounds you can ignore the adverse consequences of your actions on other people."
Alan Williams (1992). Cost-effectiveness analysis : is it ethical? Journal of Medical Ethics, 18, 7-11.



Sebastian Himmler

Sebastian Himmler

Health Economics PhD candidate

Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management

Welcome to my academic website!

I am a health economics PhD candidate at the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management in Rotterdam and hold a master degree in health economics (University of Bayreuth and UNC Chapel Hill). I am also part of a European PhD training network (Improving Quality of Care in Europe), and am funded through a Marie-Curie fellowship, awarded by the European Commission.

In my doctorate, I am applying economic and statistical tools, including applied econometrics, health economic modelling, and discrete choice experiments, to conduct research on topics surrounding tools to inform the efficient allocation of health care resources. This especially includes eliciting preferences on the importance of different (health-related) quality of life dimensions and obtaining societal monetary valuations of health and well-being gains. Further research interests include the measurement of well-being, fair pricing of pharmaceuticals, and patient and provider preferences in mental health care.

Download my resumé.

Interests

  • Health and well-being
  • Applied health economics and econometrics
  • Health preference research

Education

  • M.Sc. in Health Economics, 2016

    University of Bayreuth, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • B.Sc. in Health Economics, 2013

    University of Bayreuth

Recent Publications

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Estimating an anchored utility tariff for the well-being of older people measure (WOOP) for the Netherlands

This paper reports on a DCE developed to create a utility tariff for the WOOP well-being measure.

Willingness to pay for an early warning system for infectious diseases

This paper tries to answer the question on how much European citizens would be willing to pay for an early warning system for infectious diseases. It was part of the COMPARE project and unfortunately is now way more topcial then anticipated when the study was conducted.

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

PhD candidate

Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management

Sep 2017 – Present Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Pursuing PhD on ‘The societal value of health and well-being gain’, supervised by Job van Exel and Werner Brouwer.
 
 
 
 
 

Research Associate

WifOR GmbH

Jul 2016 – Aug 2017 Darmstadt, Germany

Responsibilities include:

  • Estmatiing productivity effects of pharmaceuticals
  • Adaptation and creation of decision models
  • Drafting research reports and publications

Skills & Software

Lighthouse-Studio

Lighthouse studio

Survey design

STATA16_icon

Stata

Statistical Software

R

R and RStudio

Statistical Software

Statistics & Econometrics

datavis

Data visualisation

ngene

Discrete choice modelling

Contact