About the authors

Katharina Blankart (, katblankart.github.io) is an assistant professor in empirical health economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Duisburg-Essen and CINCH Health Economics Research Center. Katharina is an economist with a PhD in Business Administration (both Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Germany). Her research studies the institutional settings of determining value of and access to health technology. An important aspect of this research is how providers and patients use technology to improve health and health care. Katharina’s research emphasizes the health policies and management of pharmaceutical care using secondary data.

Maryna Ivets () is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the university of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She is an applied economist with expertise in secondary data analysis in the fields of behavioral, health, and education economics. Her research uses psychology and economics to improve our understanding of early childcare’s effects on development. She is also researching how to encourage positive health behaviors through novel mechanisms, such as online self-challenges.

Eva Goetjes () is a Ph.D candidate in economics at the university of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She has a background in Business Administration and Economics, Healthcare Policy, Innovation and Management and Global Health. Her research focuses on the access to and diffusion of pharmaceutical care. Using secondary data she analyses the influence of physician behaviour and health insurance schemes on access to innovation in ambulatory care settings. A second research focus lies in the collection of drug shortage data of different European countries, to assess how reduced access to care caused by drug shortages impacts the health and health care of patients.

Kai Robert Miele () is a master’s student in economics and an upcoming doctorate candidate at University Duisburg-Essen. Kai specialized his studies in applied microeconomics in a health and labor economic context. In one specific project, Kai analyzes mental health effects of financial access to education in adulthood. Future projects are planned to cover economic returns and later-in-life health benefits of different education systems in Western countries.