research in health economics, by providing them with short and easily readable introductions to key topics. The volume brings together 50 chapters written by more than 90 leading international contributors. The contributions to the Companion are concise and focus on specific concepts, methods and key evidence. The Companion is a comprehensive and authoritative original reference volume covering theoretical and empirical issues in health economics with a balanced range of material on equity and efficiency in health care systems, health technology assessment and issues of concern for low and middle income countries. It is organised into two broad sections. The first deals with the economics of population health and of health care systems, analysed with both equity and efficiency goals in mind. The second covers the conceptual and practical issues that arise in the evaluation of health care technologies: most often applied to pharmaceuticals but also relevant for other interventions. Many of the contributions address topical and policy-relevant issues including: the economic causes of the growth of obesity in the West, the link between illicit drug use and crime, the consequences of leaving people uninsured against the costs of health care, the impact of globalisation on the international trade in health care services, the role of informal payments in many health care systems, what 'equal treatment for equal needs' means in practice, whether direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals is desirable, and how economic evidence is influencing the way that new technologies are made available to patients.

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