ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the institutionalist tradition of the economics of conventions (EoC) in the field of health and healthcare. It examines the EoC from its origins to its more recent development in order to demonstrate how it conceptualizes healthcare and health policy as strongly normative issues. Specifically, for the EoC, health is a domain in which a plurality of social values, habits, deontological and professional rules, and ethics are omnipresent and, when codified as conventions, function to determine the social trajectory of health processes. Accordingly, unlike neoclassical economics, the political economy of health and healthcare acknowledges such values as inherent to economic analysis and seeks to analyze their plural forms and performative implications in practice. In turn, based on a discussion on the concepts of marketization and industrialization, the chapter also presents a critical account of neoliberal policy concerning healthcare and health. It concludes by arguing that the EoC provides a powerful means for comprehending the conventions legitimizing capitalism, while pointing to the need to transcend the political-economic confines of this system in order to secure broader health and healthcare objectives.
