Nigel Rice, Professor of Health Economics, Centre for Health Economics
email: nigel.rice@york.ac.uk
Our 60-second interview with Nigel:
Could you please tell us what work you do in the field of mental health?
I have a long-standing interest in the interface between health and labour economics. Typically, this has encompassed issues around the impact of physical health on employment, productivity, and decisions about early retirement. More recently, my interests have focused a little more on mental health as an important component of overall health and it’s independent impact on labour outcomes. These cover general mental health problems, and mental health disability.
What do you find most rewarding and inspiring in this work?
That research can make a difference through informing evidence-based policy debate. More generally, contributing to the evidence base around important questions about population health, its determinants and its consequences.
What is the most challenging or complicated aspect of this work?
As with much of empirical work intended to inform policy a particular challenge is formulating interesting questions capable of leading to greater policy insight, but which is amenable to empirical scrutiny. A particular challenge is identifying causality which involves searching for exogenous variation in treatment either via natural experiments, or through the application of more complex econometric approaches. Advances in methods that lead to a better understanding of heterogeneity in treatment effects and the mechanism that link these to outcomes can potentially provide more nuanced and informative policy tools.
What impact do you hope your work is having - or can potentially have?
Ultimately, we all want to inform policy in some meaningful way, and/or shape the ways of thinking or tackling problems. Possibly a never-ending pursuit…
Could you share with us one piece of advice that you follow for your own mental health?
Find something to interest you, outside of work, and prioritise family and friends. Oh, and get a dog!