Business and Economics Journal

We look into the how college economics courses affect students' ability to make decisions. We are able to isolate the treatment effects of an economics education on students' responses to a decision-making survey by taking advantage of a Chinese college admissions system that assigns students to economics/business majors based on preferences and the cut-off scores for those majors on the College Entrance Exam. We specifically compare the survey responses of students who just barely meet the cut-offs for majoring in economics or business to those of students who do not, and we discover that those who have taken economics or business courses are more likely to be risk averse and less likely to be subject to common biases in probabilistic beliefs.

Since Arrow's foundational essay on health economics from 1963, the scale of the health-care sector, the share of public finances allocated to health care, and the body of research on health economics have all expanded rapidly. The need for health insurance was sparked by Arrow's emphasis on the significance of uncertainty. The theoretical growth of health economics was supported by later advances in information economics, such as the potential of no equilibrium in the insurance market due to selection. Arrow also stressed the doctor's function as the patient's agent, and much later research examined the influence of the doctor's financial and other incentives on behaviour.