Human capital is embodied in human beings. It embraces the individual's capacity to perform and enjoy activities that provide money and/or psychic income. Health behaviour affects human capital and is itself affected by the individual's human capital. This volume consists of original theoretical and empirical contributions to our knowledge of the interdependence between Human Capital and Health Behaviour.

Measurements of individual benefits of different health and medical interventions are fundamental for prioritizing among different alternative uses of resources in the healthcare sector. While psychometric measures do not necessarily provide information sufficient for assigning relative values to different health states, preference-based approaches produce measures that allow comparisons of such values. In this volume of the series of Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, entitled Preference Measurement in Health, the papers cover altruism within families, differences in risk attitudes, and estimation of health benefits of food safety. Specific topics include efficiency and altruism, comparison of mother and daughter values of HPV vaccination for daughters, differences in risk attitudes between women and men, how context matters in valuing food safety programs, and valuation of health risks associated with pesticide use.

Medical technology broadly defined to include all aspects of the process of treating disease (e.g., pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures) is profoundly important for individual health and, consequently, also for general welfare. Advances in medical technology convey the prospect of both improved population health and increased general welfare. However, because of the extensive regulation of the markets for healthcare goods and services, the development and application of medical technologies differs fundamentally from non-medical technological advances. In this volume of the "Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research" series we present several papers that provide theoretical and empirical evidence about the market for medical technology.

Obesity, which has increased in most developed countries in the past few decades, is the result of genetics, environment, and individual choices. Economics is useful for studying the individual choices that lead to obesity, explanations for the recent rise in obesity, the treatment options for obesity, and the costs and consequences of obesity for the individual and society.
The papers in this volume, devoted to the economics of obesity, illustrate the wide usefulness of the economic approach. The papers in the first section propose and test economic explanations for food-consumption choices and obesity. In particular, they assess the impact of food quality, access to fast food, food prices, legislation, and other factors on diet, physical activity, and body weight.
Treatments for obesity, specifically bariatric surgery and anti-obesity drugs, are studied in the second section of this volume. The third section is devoted to the labor market impacts of obesity; evidence from fifteen countries is presented and evaluated. The fourth and final section calculates the impact of obesity on hospital costs and examines the externalities imposed by obesity through health insurance.
Taken together, the papers in this volume advance the frontier of knowledge about the causes, implications, and consequences of obesity, and validate the usefulness of the economic approach for studying obesity in particular and medical conditions more generally.
*Studies obesity from an economic perspective
*Proposes economic explanation for food consumption choices, treatment of obesity, and treatment of the condition
*International in scope - provides evidence from 15 countries