NOVA SBE HEALTH ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT SEMINAR SERIES - JUNE 2025
In this month’s edition of the NOVA SBE Health Economics & Management Seminar Series, we will have Adeline Delavande, Professor of Economics at the Nova School of Business and Economics and the University of Technology Sydney, as well as an International Co-Investigator of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social from the University of Essex.
Professor Delavande, also an Associate Editor at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and Frontiers in Behavioral Economics, will present her research on Measuring Patient Expectations for Treatment Choice: A Case Study of Cancer Drug Dosing, in collaboration with Helena Earl, Charles F. Manski, Monica Peek, Mark Ratain, Liam Schmitt, and Austin Wesevich.
📅 Date: 5th June 2025
⏰ Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm (Lisbon Time)
📍 Location: Nova SBE | Room D009
Title: MEASURING PATIENT EXPECTATIONS FOR TREATMENT CHOICE: A Case Study Of Cancer Drug Dosing (with Helena Earl, Charles F. Manski, Monica Peek, Mark Ratain, Liam Schmitt, and Austin Wesevich)
ABSTRACT:
We study how breast cancer patients make treatment choices when facing uncertainty about drug efficacy, adverse events (AEs), and cost. The clinical context is the optimal duration of trastuzumab therapy (6 vs. 12 months) for early breast cancer. In collaboration with oncologists at the University of Chicago and University of Cambridge, we design and implement a stated-choice experiment with 250 breast cancer patients. Each subject responds to eight randomized scenarios that vary the efficacy, AE risks (cardiotoxicity and fatigue), and cost associated with the two dosing options. We elicit both binary choices and subjective probabilities of choosing each dosage, enabling a richer understanding of preferences under incomplete information. Patients’ stated probabilities respond systematically to scenario features, particularly when differences in efficacy or AEs are large. Sociodemographic covariates have limited predictive power, with the exception of metastatic status. We find that patients are willing and able to express probabilistic expectations over their treatment choices in hypothetical but clinically realistic settings. These findings demonstrate the feasibility and value of combining economic elicitation techniques with clinical research to better understand patient-centered decision-making under uncertainty.
SHORT BIOGRAPHY: Adeline Delavande
Adeline Delavande is a Professor of Economics at the Nova School of Business and Economics and the University of Technology Sydney. She is an International Co-Investigator at the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social (University of Essex) and a Research Affiliate at the Population Studies Center (University of Pennsylvania). Delavande serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and Frontiers in Behavioral Economics. She is the President-elect of the European Society for Population Economics and an elected Executive Board member of the Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics (2022–present).
