Professorship for Economics with a Focus on Empirical Health Economics
Iris Kesternich is the nucleus professor of economics with a focus on empirical health economics at Universität Hamburg and professor of behavioral economics at KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research covers three core areas: First, she examines the impact of nonmonetary incentives on the health and labor markets, for example, the influence of professional norms on medical decisions. Second, she looks at the long-term effects of adverse events such as hunger or war on human health. Third, she analyzes both consumer preferences and provider’s conduct and their effects on the health and nursing care markets. With regard to consumers, she looks primarily how the role of the family and choice of partner are related to health.
Iris Kesternich is an associate editor for the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. She is also a ZEW (Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research) research associate and she cooperates with the ZEW research group Health Care Markets and Health Policy. In addition to that she is also a member of the committee for health economics in the Verein für Socialpolitik and a member of the CESifo network. In the German Health Economics Association e.V. (dggö), she established the committee for international cooperation.
We supervise final theses as well as bachelor's and master's theses on topics in health economics. As a rule, students suggest topics, which should reflect the professorship's research areas and the topics in the courses we offer.