Using economics to advance health equity: What we know, don't know and need to know (but may never know) from Markus Haacker

This paper on using economics to advance health equity synthesizes selected works of Markus Haacker, who has passed away recently, on the impact of HIV and HIV spending on inequality and inequity. Addressing these issues was a major driving force of Haacker's career, from his first assignment at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1998, over his 2016 book “The Economics of the Global Response to HIV/AIDS”, to his most recent work on macroeconomic analysis for health policy evaluation. Showing how Haacker brought a “soul” to his study of the AIDS pandemic – a feature frequently lacking in mainstream economic analyses, this paper is an appraisal of Haacker's work, clearly laying out his empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions, and offers insights and bold ideas on thinking about and acting on inequality and inequity in the context of the rapidly changing HIV epidemic and response, and the financing of the same in the era of polycrisis. It also presents the ensuing implications for policy and practice.