Semi-parametric econometric models: Health, obesity and patient expenditures (SPEM)
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No.740654.
Investigators: Yuanyuan Gu and Andrew Jones
Advisors: Nigel Rice and Jia Chen
Project summary
Econometric modelling of healthcare costs serves many purposes: to obtain key parameters in cost-effectiveness analyses; to implement risk adjustment in insurance systems; and to examine the impact of risk factors such as smoking and obesity. Modelling healthcare costs is challenging because the cost data are typically non-negative, heavy tailed and highly skewed. The primary objective of SPEM is to develop semi-parametric methods built upon Generalised Linear Models (GLMs), a preferred framework for analysing costs and many other types of health data. SPEM will apply the new methods to produce accurate and robust estimates of the relationship between childhood obesity and healthcare costs, which are crucial in the design and evaluation of government programmes aimed at treating and preventing childhood obesity.