Antoine Lacombe, PhD

Postdoctoral Researcher in health economics

I am a postdoctoral researcher in health economics at Aix-Marseille School of Economics (Aix-Marseille Université).

My research focuses on how quantitative methods can support health decision-making, with applications in infectious-disease prevention, diagnostic strategies, and public health policy. I am particularly interested in the evaluation of health interventions, the behavioural drivers of uptake, and the production of evidence relevant to HEOR and economic evaluation.

Methodologically, I combine applied econometrics, patient preference methods, real-world and survey data to produce decision-relevant evidence in health. My work includes the design and analysis of stated-preference studies and the use of choice models to study preference heterogeneity and behavioural responses. I also use econometric modelling to analyse heterogeneous outcomes, policy impacts, and the relationships between behaviours, outcomes, and costs, with a growing focus on HEOR and economic evaluation.

I currently contribute to projects on improving the acceptability and accessibility of countermeasures against emerging epidemic threats (ACME, Institut Pasteur). Alongside this work, I am expanding my research toward economic evaluation, with growing interest in cost-effectiveness analysis, resource allocation, and the evaluation of health technologies in real-world settings.

Feel free to reach out: antoine.lacombe@univ-amu.fr.

What’s new?

New publication

Compensate at your own risk: Heterogeneity in compliance with preventive behaviors through the lens of economic and social preferences . A. Lacombe and M. Guillon · 2026 · International Journal of Health Economics and Management

Abstract & link

Protective behaviors are crucial for controlling the spread of infectious diseases. Until now, most of the literature on the understanding of the willingness to comply with protective behaviors at the individual level focused on either one of those behaviors or studied several behaviors but independently. However, protective behaviors might not be independent of each other’s and the question of the relationship between these various behaviors deserves to be further investigated. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an interesting setting to study compliance with preventive behaviors when several prophylactic measures aiming to reduce the same infection risk are available. The aim of this study is to investigate how economic and social preferences may shape the relationship between three types of COVID-19 protective behaviors among a representative sample of the French population: 1) respect of restrictions on movement, 2) compliance with barrier gestures and 3) COVID-19 testing. Using a Latent Class Analysis, we identify four groups of individuals with diverging patterns of compliance with protective behaviors, differing both in terms of intensity and types of prophylactic measures followed. Our results support the existence of a risk compensation process leading some individuals to tailor their menu of prophylactic measures until they reach the risk threshold they are willing to handle. Exploring heterogeneity in preventive behaviors may motivate authorities to design targeted prevention and communication campaigns that are better tailored to achieve public health goals.

View publication

PhD defence

Individual Trade-offs in Diagnostic Testing: An Economic Analysis of Preventive and Diagnostic Decisions in Infectious Diseases . A. Lacombe · Publicly defended on April 21, 2026

Abstract, jury composition and links

Diagnostic tests are central tools for infectious disease prevention and control, but their impact depends directly on individuals’ decisions to adopt preventive behaviors and undergo testing. This thesis presents four empirical studies investigating individual decisions to adopt preventive behaviors and the preferences that shape the acceptability of preventive actions in infectious diseases.

This work combines tools from behavioral economics and stated-preference methods to examine how individuals’ preferences shape the trade-offs between the perceived costs and benefits of preventive behaviors and diagnostic testing, and how these preferences can be used to inform public health policies.

The first chapter studies individuals’ perceived value of diagnostic information with respect to disease characteristics, namely treatability and transmissibility, and individual traits. The second chapter examines compliance with preventive behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in France for a set of preventive measures, including diagnostic testing. The third chapter studies mothers’ and healthcare workers’ preferences for the diagnosis and management of the risk of vertical transmission of HIV, HBV and syphilis in The Gambia. The fourth chapter explores the preferences of women engaged in sex work and adolescent girls and young women in Kampala, Uganda, and Nairobi, Kenya, regarding the provision of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis within sexual and reproductive health services.

Name	Role	Affiliation
Composition of the PhD committee
Olivier Chanel	Chair	DR CNRS, AMSE, Aix-Marseille Université
Giulia Greco	Examiner	Associate Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Nora Moumjid	Reviewer	Professor, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Clémence Thébaut	Reviewer	Associate Professor HDR, Université de Bordeaux
Paola Villar	Examiner	Associate Professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Jérôme Wittwer	Examiner	Professor, Université de Bordeaux
Sylvie Boyer	PhD co-supervisor	Associate Professor, Aix-Marseille Université
Bruno Ventelou	PhD supervisor	DR CNRS, AMSE, Aix-Marseille Université

thèse.fr Research page

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Thoughts, with a Soundtrack

A playlist for thinking (and for troubleshooting stubborn code that should have worked the first time).