PAM 4280 - The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors

(crosslisted) ECON 3710
(SBA-HE) (CU-UGR)

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Prerequisite: PAM 2000 or ECON 3030 and PAM 3100, ECON 3120 or ECON 3140.

J. Cawley.

Risky health behaviors such as cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse, risky sex, drug use, poor diet and physical inactivity (leading to obesity), and self-harm are responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and impose billions of dollars in medical care costs each year in the United States. This course teaches the economic approach to studying risky health behaviors. The research literature on the economic causes and correlates of risky health behaviors will be studied in detail. Numerous policies to modify risky health behaviors, such as the minimum legal drinking age and recreational marijuana use laws, will be debated in class. A policy wargame is conducted, with students creating advertisements, giving oral presentations, and lobbying policymakers to advocate a specific policy position.

In the Fall of 2020, this class will be taught in a hybrid format. Students can sign up for either the partially in-person version or the purely online version. No matter which version you sign up for, each week you will watch recorded lectures and complete accompanying quizzes (the asynchronous component) and I will meet with you live, whether you chose online or in-person (the synchronous component). During those synchronous meetings, we will discuss the lecture material and evaluate real-world policies to modify risky health behaviors. Students will then write brief essays evaluating those policies. After Thanksgiving, the course (like all others at Cornell) will be entirely online and we will conduct policy wargames. Students will then write an essay interpreting the events of the wargame.

Outcome 1: Teach you the economic approach to studying a wide variety of risky health behaviors.

Outcome 2: Enhance your oral and written communication skills.