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Associate Professor Wendy Morrison

Education:
D. Phil., University of York, Heslington, York, UK, 1996
M.Sc., Univeristy of London, London, UK, 1990
B.A., McMaster Univeristy, Canada, 1989
B.A. in Political Science, McMaster Univeristy, Canada, 1987



Office: CA 530
Phone: 317.423.5502
gcmorris@iupui.edu

Dr. Morrison is also working on several funded projects as either Principal Investigator of Co-investigator, including: “Matching Patient and Surgeons' Health Preferences and Expectations”, “Medicaid Medical Advisory Committee”, and the “Indiana Cancer Pain and Depression Study”.

Wendy Morrison has a joint appointment in Economics and the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care. Her research areas are Health Economics and Experimental Economics.

Governmental or individual decisions involve weighing the costs and benefits of different actions. For most goods, the costs and benefits are reflected in market prices. However, healthcare is a market in which many of the costs and benefits are not measured by market prices. This makes the real costs and benefits difficult to quantify. For example, there are strong external effects to some private healthcare decisions, such as vaccinations, which protect many other people besides the person being vaccinated. If these benefits are not taken into account, then too few people will be vaccinated. Also, the question how much better most patients feel after taking one drug as opposed to another is important not only to the patient deciding which drug to take, but also to insurance companies deciding what drugs cover.

Economics offers several consumer survey based approaches to estimating costs and benefits. The surveys ask members of the public how much of one good they would give up in order to acquire more of another. I have done applied research estimating treatment benefits with this survey method. I have also conducted experiments to investigate how responses to valuation questions change when some aspect of the market changes (e.g. do people assign a different price to the same good when they are buying than when they are selling).

Selected Publications:

• “Improving the sensitivity of the Time Trade-Off Method: Results of an experiment using chained TTO questions,” with A. Neilson and M. Malek, Health Care Management Science, Vol. 5, No. 1, 53-61, 2002.
• “Demand for Health Care in Denmark: Results of a national sample survey using contingent valuation,” with M. Gyldmark, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 53, No. 8, 1023-1036, 2001.
• “Measuring the Effects of Seating on People with Profound and Multiple Disabilities and Their Carers: A preliminary study,” with A. Neilson, G. Bardsley, D. Rowley, J. Hogg, M. Malek, and C. Kirkwood, Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, Vol. 38, No. 2, 201-214, 2001.
• “The Endowment Effect and Expected Utility,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 47, No. 2, 95-109, 2000.
• “WTP and WTA in Repeated Trial Experiments: Learning or Leading?” Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 1, 57-72, 2000.
• “Understanding the Disparity Between WTP and WTA: Endowment Effect, Substitutability, or Impercise Preferences?” Economics Letters, Vol. 59, No. 2, 189-194, 1998.
• "Resolving Differences in Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept comment," American Economic Review, Vol. 87, No. 1, 236-240, 1997.
• “Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept: Some evidence of an endowment effect,” Applied Economics, Vol. 29, No. 4, 411-417, 1997.
• “HYE and TTO: What is the difference?” Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 16, No. 5, 563-578, 1997.
• “Reappraising the Use of Contingent Valuation: A Reply,” with M. Gyblmerk, Health Economics, Vol. 2, No. 4, 363-365, 1993.
• “Appraising the Use of Contingent Valuation,” with M. Gyldmark, Health Economics, Vol. 1, No. 4, 233-243, 1992.