Health Economics: A Subdiscipline?

Abstract

For all the zeal economists have had for theoretical extention and elaboration, model application and historical introspection, there has been scant, if any, attention paid to the determinants and course of disciplinary development within economics. What are in want of some explanation are the determinants and responding allocative mechanisms that influence the structure and developmental process occurring within economics at any moment of time.1 It is of course obvious to economists that new subdisciplines2 develop occasionally while at the same time some subdisciplines are rising in relative importance and others are falling. Clearly subdisciplinary development is more than a teleological extension of the specialization and division of academic labor to the limits of curiosity. Subdisciplines are responses to secular as well as more obviously shortrun demand factors, and they are themselves short-run and long-run capacity responses to demand. It is the process of increased demand for research capacity and the consequent responses that are reflected in subdisciplinary changes, and these are the focus of this investigation. Irrespective of the particular subdiscipline, there are a number of quite general reasons why economists might wish to know more about the developmental process. What are the determinants of demand for a subdiscipline, and what occasions changes among them? What are the appro-