The Economics of Life and Death

This course is a survey of economic perspectives on issues of life and death. The central idea of economics is that scarcity and constraints are unavoidable facts of life. While economists traditionally focus on the role of scarcity in decisions that people make about work, saving, and spending (among other topics), the role of scarcity extends to a much broader range of decisions, including to fundamental decisions about health, life, and death. The analytic framework of economics helps to explain many puzzling facts about life and death decisions. In this course, we will apply this framework to a diverse set of topics, including the value of life, behavior under uncertainty, rationing healthcare, COVID-19, errors in medical training, smoking, and obesity. Though the language of the economics literature is often very mathematical, no mathematical sophistication is necessary to do well in the course.