Using PowerPoint to Think and Write Health Economics Allen C. Goodman iHEA World Congress Milano – July 2015

Student Experience Students often come to both undergraduate and graduate economics courses with little or no experience in writing economics … Often little experience in any sort of scholarly writing – and they detest outlining anything. 7/6/20152

All of these can be done as PP presentations It makes students synopsize what they want to do. It makes students write it down. It makes it easy for them to organize … and re-organize … and re-organize again. Makes it easy for students to provide intermediate output – in the consulting vernacular, “deliverables.” 7/6/20153

Tool = PowerPoint For outlines, data organization, and at the end of the process, presentation, provides a helpful way for students to 1.start the process, 2.provide early output for instructional review, 3.organize data, diagrams, maps, and/or tables, 4.“fill in the blanks” as they write, 5.and then … present the results 7/6/20154

Simple Example Determinants of National Health Expenditures Easy to do with OECD Health Data As simple as Expenditures/person = a + b GDP/person, for a single country Can be more complicated (more countries, more variables) Can have more complicated econometrics (cointegration analysis). 7/6/20155

1. What should I do? – 5 slides 1.Title (it’s amazing how many are entitled “presentation”). 2.Null and alternative hypotheses 3.Database 4.Variables to use 5.One slide list of references (maybe 5) a.Wikipedia is not a scholarly reference b.FGS/7 is not a scholarly reference. 7/6/20156

2. Early output - Reading Structure the reading Think of this like a chemistry or a physics experiment Aim Equipment Procedure Results Interpretation Here Economics analogy Aim Approach Database Findings Meaning What did you like? What didn’t you like? 7/6/20157

Spreadsheet Format Many journals accept (PREFER) this as a literature review 7/6/20158

3. Data, Diagrams, Maps, or Tables Health Expenditures and GDP Per Capita – GDPExpenditures MeanMedianMeanMedian Canada Italy UK US /6/20159

Summary Regression – UK – Log-Log 7/6/201510

Summary Regression – US – Log-Log 7/6/201511

4. Write– UK – Log-Log R-squared is over 0.99 – pretty good Elasticity is /6/201512

Write – US – Log-Log R-squared is over 0.99 – pretty good Elasticity is 1.40 US elasticity > UK elasticity Graph? Put in same table? 7/6/201513

5. Finish the paper Do I need more analyses? – Put them in the right place. Do I have to read something else – Put that in the right place. Am I much more organized? We hope so. If you are writing in MS Word, you can just cut and paste the tables, graphs, references. 7/6/201514

Arrière Pensées This is obviously an undergraduate example. It can also work at the graduate level, often topic by topic or chapter by chapter. Graduate students (and advisers) are often frustrated by lack of progress or talking past each other. Often when a student will come in with an idea, I’ll say, “write me a 10 slide PowerPoint.” They have to organize They have to figure out what is important They have to figure out how to present the key ideas rather than simply writing them down. 7/6/201515

Autres Arrière Pensées On occasion, I’ve dispensed with the paper entirely, and asked for a complete set of PP slides. This depends on the motives for the research. It won’t work if you view it as important to concentrate on grammar. Insist that students avoid MASSIVE “cut and pastes”. This is equivalent to stringing along paragraph-long quotes in a paper … and just as bad. 7/6/201516

So … Rather than being the last thing that students do, PowerPoint can help from the start. Outline Organize Rearrange Summarize … and finally Present 7/6/201517