Overview
Amy Finkelstein is a professor of economics at MIT and NBER research associate. Her work focuses on health insurance markets — particularly the welfare effects of insurance, selection, moral hazard, and public health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. She was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2012 for her contributions to health economics.
Key Contributions / Features
- Selection on moral hazard (Einav, Finkelstein, Ryan, Schrimpf, and Cullen 2013): Co-developed the "selection on moral hazard" framework and established that selection on the slope of spending is roughly as important as selection on expected health in plan choice; introduced the policy implication that high-deductible plan introductions overestimate savings due to low-moral-hazard self-selection.
- Massachusetts health insurance reform and the Oregon Medicaid lottery: Major RCT-based and quasi-experimental research on causal effects of health insurance on health outcomes and utilization.
- Medicare and moral hazard (Finkelstein 2007, QJE): Estimated the price elasticity of medical spending using the introduction of Medicare in 1965, finding that public coverage raised hospital spending by ~35–40%.
- Advantageous selection in long-term care insurance (Finkelstein and McGarry 2006, AER): Documented that long-term care insurance is characterized by advantageous selection on risk preferences, not pure adverse selection.
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