IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aka/aoecon/v68y2018isupplement1p99-114.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Innovation and Shortage: The Yin and Yang of the Health Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Karen Eggleston

    (Stanford University and National Bureau of Economic Research, Director of the Asia Health Policy Program)

Abstract

The economic challenges countries face when adopting personalized medicine technologies provide an important illustration of many of the concepts articulated by János Kornai in his pioneering research on innovation in market-driven, capitalist surplus economies. In Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang often represent contradictory yet inseparable opposites – two forces that not merely coexist, but are synergistic and mutually dependent. This concept is an apt analogy for the relationship between innovation and shortage in the health sector. Dangers arise from over-emphasizing the Yin of innovation over the Yang of access, and vice versa. If we over-constrain innovation, we die needlessly early and forfeit quality of life that innovations might have enabled. If we do not distribute access to innovations equitably, we diminish our humanity, suffer backlashes from populism and distrust of science and expertise, and risk social instability, even violent conflict.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Eggleston, 2018. "Innovation and Shortage: The Yin and Yang of the Health Sector," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 68(supplemen), pages 99-114, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aka:aoecon:v:68:y:2018:i:supplement1:p:99-114
    Note: This paper is dedicated to Professor János KORNAI, an inspiring intellect and mentor, who will turn 90 years old on January 21, 2018. I am grateful to Péter Mihályi for his kind invitation to contribute to this special issue of Acta Oeconomica in honor of János, and to Ross Eric Johnson and Hokuto Asano for excellent research assistance.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.akademiai.com/doi/pdf/10.1556/032.2018.68.S.8
    Download Restriction: subscription
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    health sector; personalized medicine; innovation; health technologies;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
    • I0 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aka:aoecon:v:68:y:2018:i:supplement1:p:99-114. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kriston, Orsolya (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://akademiai.hu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.