Health Economics at Carnegie Mellon

Carnegie Mellon University has a long history of productive research in health economics -- e.g., the groundbreaking work on hospital cost functions by Judith and Lester Lave, and fundamental work on cost-effectiveness analysis by Mark Kamlet.

 In recent years, Carnegie Mellon has built on this history to develop a core strength in health economics research and education, with an emphasis on examination of competition and health care markets and institutions. Carnegie Mellon hosted the year 2002 annual health economics conference co-sponsored by the VA Management Science group.

Health economics research at Carnegie Mellon focuses on three areas:

• Industrial Organization of Health Care -- Researchers working on issues in this area include Professors Martin Gaynor and William Vogt and graduate students Sujoy Chakravarty and Asako Shimazaki.  Graduates include Jean Abraham, Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota,  Farasat Bokhari, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Ranjani Krishnan, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University.  This area of research includes work on hospital competition, technology adoption, insurance choice, antitrust policy in health care markets, and optimal incentives in health care organizations.

• Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Health Care -- Professor Mark Kamlet's research concentrates on the theoretical underpinnings of cost-effectiveness analysis and on application issues.

• Health Impacts of Environmental Regulation – Professor Lester Lave heads a large group of researchers exploring critical issues related to health effects of environmental policy.

A special advantage of the health economics strength at Carnegie Mellon is that it dovetails well with the university’s related, pre-existing strengths in

• applied microeconomics,

• technology policy,

• behavioral decision theory,

• biomedical technology development, and

• health informatics.

 The combination of the university’s complementary strengths and its interdisciplinary culture creates exciting opportunities for joint research resources and projects. For example, plans are underway for a medical database repository that would be a resource for researchers in both health policy and medical records confidentiality. The Carnegie Mellon Census Data Research Center, the first such center housed at a university, is a unique resource providing access to confidential Census data. Health economists at Carnegie Mellon also benefit from the strong ties that they maintain with health economics and health services researchers at the near-by University of Pittsburgh.

 Carnegie Mellon offers a number of educational programs in health economics and is actively seeking candidates interested in this field for the university’s related Ph.D. programs:

•  the Ph.D. program in Public Policy through the university’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management,

• the Ph.D. program in Economics through the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, or the Ph.D. program in Economics and Public Policy offered jointly by the two schools.

 Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School also offers two professional master’s degree programs in health care:

• the Master of Science in Health Care Policy and Management (on-site program), and

• the Master of Medical Management program for physicians, offered in cooperation with the American College of Physician Executives (on-site and online components).