Assignments

This page describes each graded component for the semester. Most of your grade is earned in class — class participation, panels, simulations, quizzes, and the midterm. The take-home portion is three short empirical homeworks. Details for each homework live on its own page; check the due dates carefully.

Grade at a glance

The course is worth 300 points total, with 80% earned in class.

Component Points How it works
Class participation 50 Attendance (20) + engagement on lecture days (30)
Panel 45 Panelist when drawn (25) + audience questions on panel days (20)
Simulations 25 Play + reflection, best 5 of 7
Quizzes 60 Best 5 of 6, in-class, auto-graded
Midterm 60 One in-class exam
Empirical homework 60 Best 2 of 3, 30 pts each

Every in-class component has more opportunities than you need for full credit, so an occasional absence or off day will not sink your grade. The syllabus has the complete policy.

Class participation

Attendance and engagement are the everyday in-class points, 50 points in all, handled through our course platform.

  • Attendance. Check in at the start of class for 1 point, up to 20.
  • Engagement. On lecture days, ask or answer a question through the hand-raise queue for 2 points, up to 30 over the semester. Questions on panel days count toward the panel’s audience points instead.

The mechanics of each are explained in class and in the syllabus.

Panels

On panel days a few students are drawn at random through the course platform to sit as the panel, while everyone else takes part from the floor. The panel is worth 45 points and rewards engagement in either role.

Each panel runs in two stages. First the panel fields a set of questions I put to them, then the floor opens and the rest of the class asks the questions. As a panelist you’re scored out of 25 on a short, concrete checklist (whether you answered the question put to you, whether your answer drew on the assigned reading, and whether you built on another panelist), so the payoff is coming with the reading done, not talking the most. Everyone is drawn at least once and most are drawn twice, and your best panel counts, so a single off day won’t sink you.

On the panel days you’re not drawn, you earn audience points from the floor, 2 points per question you ask through the hand-raise queue, up to 20 over the semester. Asking good questions on the days you’re in the audience is worth as much as a strong turn on the panel.

Each panel comes with a preparation guide, posted before the class — a long list of questions to work through as you read, some answerable straight from the reading and some open-ended. Work through all of them as you read — the questions I put to the panel come from these guides, sometimes word for word and sometimes reworded.

  • Panel 1 — Who covers whom? · Thu 9/3 · guide
  • Panel 2 — Why we buy insurance · Thu 9/10 · guide
  • Panel 3 — Competition in insurance · Thu 9/24 · guide
  • Panel 4 — Overtreated? · Thu 10/8 · guide
  • Panel 5 — The end of fee-for-service? · Tue 10/20 · guide
  • Panel 6 — Does profit status matter? · Tue 10/27 · guide
  • Panel 7 — Are hospitals too big? · Tue 11/17 · guide
  • Panel 8 — Generics and the patent cliff · Thu 12/3 · guide

Each panel’s guide is linked above; skim the one for the upcoming panel as you do the reading.

The last class flips the format into a reverse panel, where invited guests put the questions to you, now that you’re the experts.

Simulations

Seven in-class simulations across the semester, best five count (two can be missed). On a simulation day we trade the usual discussion for an interactive, multiplayer game run through the course platform, then debrief what happened. You earn credit by playing and by submitting a short reflection on the decisions you made. As with the quizzes, the spare two mean an occasional absence won’t hurt.

Quizzes

Six short quizzes over the semester, best five count (one is dropped). They are timed, taken in class, and auto-graded through our course platform. Quizzes carry the lighter theory for each module — definitions and one-step applications — so keeping up with the readings and slides is enough to do well.

Midterm

One in-class exam worth 60 points, covering the heavier theory and derivations. This is the place to show your work and earn partial credit. There is no final exam. Documented absences can be made up; otherwise the midterm has no built-in slack, so plan for the date on the schedule.

Empirical homework

Three homeworks, 30 points each, and only your best two count — so one can be dropped. Each is due by midnight on its Friday deadline. Late homeworks lose 2% per day.

These are empirical only. The theory for each module is assessed in class, through quizzes and the midterm. The homeworks are where you work with real health care data.

You are required to use an AI coding assistant — GitHub Copilot is free with your Emory GitHub account, or use the tool of your choice. Let it write the R or Python. The mechanical coding is assumed to be free now, which is exactly why these assignments ask for genuine data work rather than the pre-cleaned, Excel-friendly exercises of past years. Your job is not to produce code. Your job is to direct the tool, check what it returns, and interpret it as a health economist. The AI will frequently hand you a confident, clean, and wrong answer, and catching that is the point of the assignment.

Submit a rendered notebook (Quarto, R Markdown, or Jupyter) containing your code, its output, and your written answers. Each part is worth 3 points:

  • 3 points: correct, with sound economic reasoning
  • 2 points: close, minor error or thin reasoning
  • 1 point: attempted but the economic judgment is missing or wrong
  • 0 points: no work, or the unexamined AI output pasted in

Somewhere in each notebook you must include a verification note: one specific point where the AI’s first output was wrong, incomplete, or misleading, and an explanation in economic terms of how you knew. “It ran without errors” does not count.

Getting started

New to R, or to reading empirical papers? A few resources that help with the homework: