In economics, scholarly research tends to determine the nature of societies’ understanding of healthcare systems, labour markets, and public service delivery. It is a subject with a long history of integrating theoretical modelling with empirical observation. In the last few decades, the health economics sub-discipline has been one of the fastest-expanding fields in the subject. As measured by the Office for National Statistics, healthcare spending in the United Kingdom accounted for 12.4 per cent of GDP in 2021, and both the size of the sector and the necessity of careful examination of how resources are spent should be evident to all. Universities have come to recognize increasingly the necessity for economists to examine these topics, and the research conducted by scholars in this arena has shaped academic discourse as well as government policy.
Martin John Chalkley, who was born on 1 November 1958 in Nuneaton, is among those academic experts who established a career in the intersection of classical economic theory and applied health research. His entry to the topic started at the University of Southampton, graduating in 1980 with a first-class honours in economics. He then undertook postgraduate work at the University of Warwick, earning an MA in 1981 and a PhD in 1985. Chalkley was the first member of his family to go to university, and his subject of study indicated a fascination with economic policy that started while he was in school at Forest School in Winnersh.
Chalkley’s early research work had concentrated on unemployment, using the framework of job search theory. This field of economics aims to explain how people search for work and the impact of labour market frictions on job outcomes. The theory underpinning this work was extensively researched in the 1980s, when the United Kingdom experienced significant structural change in employment. Chalkley’s contribution here firmly located him within contemporary mainstream economic discourse, before the beginning of his career in applied areas with policy implications.
Chalkley started his academic teaching career in 1984 when he was appointed as an economics lecturer at the University of Southampton. He served in that capacity until 1999, making contributions towards undergraduate teaching as well as graduate student supervision. The position allowed him to engage in research while influencing the academic growth of future economists. At Southampton, his research started going in the direction of healthcare systems, specifically how incentives influence medical service providers. This was the start of what would become his best-known area of research.
By the mid-1990s, international recognition for health economics had emerged as governments sought to reform health financing. Chalkley realigned his focus to this field, looking at how payment systems might stimulate efficiency without reducing the quality of services. Alongside James Malcomson, he established theoretical models that investigated fixed price prospective payment systems, which were highly cited in academic literature. This study proposed that carefully constructed payment systems could control costs while preserving standards of service, a theme he would pursue throughout his professional life.
In 1999, Chalkley became professor of economics at Dundee University. He was there until 2011, with a three-year term as department head from 2004 to 2008. His time in Dundee coincided with increasing interest in health system performance, and his research and teaching reflected the wider move of economics in the direction of applied policy analysis. In his years in Scotland, he also served as president of the Scottish Economic Society from 2006 to 2008. Afterwards, he led the Work and Wellbeing programme at the Scottish Institute for Research in Economics between 2007 and 2010. These posts reflected his involvement in the broader academic community and his contribution to building research agendas within the field.
In 2011, Chalkley became a professor at the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York, a world-renowned institution for applied health research. Since the 1980s, the Centre has been at the centre of UK health economics, publishing high-profile studies that have shaped the National Health Service and global agencies. At York, Chalkley continued to produce both empirical and theoretical research, including on dental X-ray usage, hospital payment systems, and performance-based financing in low-income nations.
A 2018 paper co-authored with Stefan Listl analyzed the effect of financial incentives on dental X-rays and concluded that payment systems sometimes induce unnecessary treatment. More recently, in 2022, he co-authored a study examining fifteen years of hospital lengths of stay data, providing evidence on the long-term impacts of diagnosis-related group payment reforms.
Aside from published work, Chalkley’s education and supervision of students at York have contributed to the future generation of health economists. The Centre for Health Economics welcomes students and researchers from all over the globe, and as a professor, his influence has spread beyond the UK. Through the use of empirical investigation alongside theory, his research continues to tackle issues of how financial arrangements influence healthcare delivery.
Chalkley’s own academic career traces a path starting with explorations of unemployment in theory and evolving into continued work in health economics. At Southampton, he set up the foundations for teaching and early research, Dundee provided leadership and promoted a larger visibility for the area within the Scottish academic landscape, and at York, he was placed in one of Europe’s strongest locations for health economics. He has merged research, teaching, and institutional leadership throughout his career and shown both continuity and change in his work in economics.
In a time when health care systems continue to be at a fiscal breaking point and governments are trying to achieve a balance between costs and quality, the research carried out by academics like Chalkley provides policymakers with the evidence on which to act. His career demonstrates how economic theory can develop into practice with immediate application to healthcare provision and public expenditure. From his initial research on job search theory to his current position at the University of York, Martin John Chalkley has had a career that unites fundamental economic theory with the relevant concerns of health system performance.
