Research
About research
My research lies at the intersection of healthcare markets, regulation, and organizational behavior.
Health economist with real-world experience & analytical depth
I’m especially interested in how institutional and contractual structures shape decisions in areas such as health insurance design, hospital operations, and medical technology adoption.
As a weekend scholar and active co-author, I work closely with academic collaborators on peer-reviewed publications. Our projects explore topics including insurer competition under policy constraints, hospital-physician integration, and the strategic behavior of firms navigating coverage and reimbursement for novel medical technologies. I use a range of applied microeconomic tools – from quasi-experimental designs to structural modeling – to bring analytic clarity to real-world policy questions.
My industry experience informs how I approach these questions. As a lead contributor in economic consulting, I’ve interpreted complex licensing, cost-sharing, and co-development agreements – translating legal language into its economic implications. I’ve also worked extensively on healthcare litigation and regulatory matters, providing policy analysis and economic evaluation in fast-paced, high-stakes contexts. These experiences sharpen my intuition for institutional nuance and help ground my research in practice.
My Toolkit
Selected Working Papers
Job Market Paper
Cost-Sharing Reduction Subsidy: Who Benefits and How It Should be Financed Evidence from the California Health Exchange
Abstract
With annual spending of $7 billion, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Cost-sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies offer extra benefits such as a lower deductible and a lower out-of-pocket maximum to eligible low-income enrollees who purchase any qualified plan on the exchanges. In October 2017, the government terminated the CSR payments, but still requires insurers to offer such extra benefits. I investigate how CSR defunding impacted insurers, consumers, and public spending. Combining individual-level claims data from a major insurer in California and individual-level enrollment data, I estimate a model of insurance demand and insurers’ competition.
with Robert Huckman, Ingrid Nembhard, Amelia Bond & Steve Schawb
Staffing Mix, Turnover, and Productivity: Evidence from Military Nursing Wards
Abstract
High turnover and reliance on temporary nurses are persistent challenges in healthcare delivery, yet the mechanisms through which staffing changes affect patient outcomes remain not fully understood. We develop and test a theory of team familiarity as an episodic resource—built through repeated collaboration, disrupted by turnover, and costly to rebuild. Using ten years of data from the U.S. Military Health System, we exploit quasi-random rotations of active duty nurses to separate the effects of team familiarity from organizational familiarity. We find that turnover increases patient length of stay, readmissions, and ICU admissions, with effects nearly twice as large in wards treating complex patients. Loss of team familiarity imposes larger productivity costs than loss of organizational familiarity, underscoring the fragility of ward-level routines. Moreover, permanent staff contribute substantially more to team productivity than temporary contractors, while active duty nurses occupy an intermediate position. Our findings highlight how frequent resets in team composition limit the gains from accumulated experience and identify staffing strategies that can mitigate the costs of turnover and temporary workforce reliance.
with Hanming Fang, Gordon Liu, Ruochen Sun & Huyang Zhang
Price, Access, and Quality under Centralized Procurement: Evidence from China's National Stent Procurement
Abstract
To curb rising healthcare costs, governments are adopting centralized procurement policies that condition market access on deep price cuts. While these reforms reduce prices, they may also restrict product variety, raising concerns about access and quality. We study China’s 2021 centralized auction for drug-eluting stents (DES), which traded guaranteed volumes for steep discounts.
Using claims data from a large province (2018–2022), we apply a Regression Discontinuity and Difference-in-Discontinuities design. The policy cut DES prices by 89%, reduced spending by 24%, and increased utilization by 57%. However, hospitals responded to higher volume by shortening stays and cutting concurrent care, leading to a modest rise in 30-day readmissions.
The policy achieved large fiscal savings (~243M RMB annually), but at a cost to quality—especially for complex patients. Our findings highlight the need to pair procurement reforms with safeguards against volume-driven welfare losses.
Dissertation Chapter
Adverse Selection in Individual Health Insurance Market
Abstract
The Affordable Care Act has implemented policy interventions to address adverse selection at the extensive and the intensive margins. However, evidence of intensive adverse selection has been lacking due to data limitations. We fill the literature gap by comparing care utilization among exchange enrollees with utilization among employer-sponsored small group enrollees who are covered by actuarially similar products. We obtain administrative and claims data from a large U.S. insurer between 2014 and 2017 and match its plans sold in the two markets based on actuarial values (AV). Using a two-way fixed effect analysis, we find the exchanges had experienced a higher degree of adverse selection compared to the small group market.
The average annual utilization by exchange Bronze plans is $2,482 less than that by small group Bronze equivalent. The exchange Gold and Platinum plans, on the other hand, incur annual utilization $2,608 and $8,616 more than their small group equivalent. Measuring the intensive adverse selection as the utilization slope against plan AV in the exchanges relative the slope in the small group market, we find the following: on the exchanges, a 10% increase in plan AV is associated with a $2,700 increase in annual care utilization; in comparison, the same AV increase is only associated with a $720 utilization increase in the small group market. A large proportion of the detected adverse selection is due to exchange enrollees’ strategic decision on when to enroll and how long to stay covered.