Rosemary Kelleher

Dr. Rosemary Murphy graduated in 1997 with a B Comm Degree, majoring in Economics and in 1998 with a Masters of Economics Science. Throughout her primary and masters degree she focused on Business Economics having a specific interest in the area of Economic Regulation. Rosemary commenced her lecturing career in 1998 in the Department of Economics, University College Cork with a teaching portfolio combining Business, Health and Quantitative Economics. It was from this teaching portfolio that her interest in the business of Health Economics grew, leaving her to commence her PhD (Health Economics) Degree in January 2003. Her PhD investigated the equivalence scales determining medical card eligibility in Ireland, the re-regulation of same and was completed in January 2006. Rosemary is an active member of the Health Economics Group in the School of Economics. This group emphasises the business element of health economics and through this group she has contributed to many conferences and papers in health and business economics. Rosemary is currently the director of the PhD (Health Economics) Degree with a portfolio compromising of completed and ongoing PhD research theses. The current theme of the PhD (Health Economics) Degree is the Economics of Subjective Well Being.

Her research interests are in the area of both health economics and quantitative economics in particular focusing on equivalence scales, equity, regulation and survey methods. I am interested in Health Economics, especially Alternative Medicine and the regulation thereof. I am currently working on the question of, "Is making St John’s Wort a prescription drug a regulation too far." Also, in another paper I am estimating the actual market for smoking cession. Current Research Projects:Estimation of Engel and Rothbarth Equivalences Scales for Ireland.Estimation of Shape Invariant Scales for Ireland: An Engel Curve Approach.Household Size and the Demand for Food: An Endogeneity Issue.An Analysis of the Demand for Free General Practitioner Services in Ireland.Willingness to Pay for Lifestyle Advice.

An effective communicator is an essential characteristic to achieve excellence in lecturing. I would consider myself an effective communicator. I place a huge emphasis on the delivery of each course and use a number of different teaching aids for each module I teach. To communicate theoretical information to students I use a combination of words, computer packages and examples. Even though communication does not necessarily mean the use of words, they do form an integral part of a successful lecture. Speaking with a clear, interesting and enthusiastic voice indicates immediately to the students that the topic at hand is interesting and that you too as lecturer find it fascinating. As I always say to my teaching assistants, how will your students find your class interesting if you don’t seem to be interested it in? I am lucky that I am teaching economics since I personally find it captivating and therefore it is easy for me to reflect this in my teaching. Also, I have a junior bronze, bronze, silver and gold medal in elocution and I find this training really helps me to achieve clear diction in class. A class full of lecturing with no other teaching aids can be quiet monotonous since students do not like to be lectured at. To avoid monotony, I use power point to display the slides containing the theoretical information, provide handouts so the students do not spend their entire time writing but can sit, listen and mentally absorb the material and I apply the theoretical information through the use of recent examples identified in the relevant literature. To communicate the idea that economics has many diverse uses, which is of fundamental importance for my masters classes since each year they have to identify potential thesis topics, I strive to display to the students that economics is central to any decision that anyone makes at any time and therefore there is a multitude of topics o