econ phd stanford

Working Papers

Nested Bundling (Job Market Paper) Revise & Resubmit, American Economic Review . (previously titled "The Simple Economics of Optimal Bundling") Last updated: November 2023.

Costly Multidimensional Screening Revise & Resubmit, Review of Economic Studies . Last updated: August 2022. arXiv . SSRN . -->

Comparison of Screening Devices (with Piotr Dworczak and Mohammad Akbarpour) Last updated: February 2024. SSRN . -->

Dynamic Pricing with Limited Commitment (with Martino Banchio) Last updated: December 2021. arXiv . -->

Published and Forthcoming Articles

Pricing Power in Advertising Markets: Theory and Evidence (with Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse M. Shapiro, and Ali Yurukoglu) American Economic Review (2024). SSRN . -->

Matter-Sector Lorentz Violation in Binary Pulsars (with Ross J. Jennings and Jay D. Tasson) Physical Review D (2015). arXiv . -->

White House report draws on SIEPR scholarship

This year's Economic Report of the President cites the work of several SIEPR faculty affiliates. 

'We’d love the research community to help'

Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, met with students, faculty and other members of the SIEPR community to discuss a wide range of economic policy issues — and the importance of academic research.

Neale Mahoney named next director of SIEPR

An expert on consumer financial markets, health care economics, and medical debt, Mahoney will take the helm of SIEPR on Jan. 1, 2025. 

See what draws our scholars and students to economic policy

When Annamaria Lusardi greets students on the first day of her class on personal finance, she sets the record straight: She isn’t teaching them just how to save or invest. “This course is about learning how to make decisions that will set you up for success,” she tells them. Learn more about Annamaria and others featured in our Why Econ series.

Inflation's winners and losers

Inflation has surged across the world for the first time in years, reigniting interest in a longstanding question: Who is most hurt by increasing prices?  John Grigsby, a Visiting Fellow at SIEPR, examines who is hit the hardest by the two major drivers of inflation fluctuations, and why they affect different households quite differently. 

Recent News

70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

SIEPR Senior Fellow Sean Reardon and researchers at Stanford and USC launch the Segregation Explorer, a website providing data on segregation trends and patterns across the U.S.

May 07, 2024

• Research Highlight

The unexpected explanation for why school segregation spiked

The recent rise in segregation in schools is due to two specific policy choices, SIEPR Senior Fellow Sean Reardon tells Washington Post.

May 06, 2024

• Media Mention

Bad news bias in gasoline price coverage

TV coverage of gas prices is negatively skewed and it's only getting worse, three SIEPR affiliates write for Briefing Book.

• Energy and Environment
• Money and Finance

Upcoming Events

Promoting competition in ai.

John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building 366 Galvez Street Stanford , CA 94305 United States

2024 Summer Economic Institute for Teachers

Stanford University John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building 366 Galvez Street Stanford , CA 94305 United States

Welcome to our returning majors and potential majors!

Economic Majors have diverse interests. To provide guidance, we have grouped courses into  Focus Areas:  Behavioral & Experimental, Finance, International & Development, Government Policy Analysis, Quantitative Methods, Business Strategy and Regulation. Students can focus on a specific area or take a range of courses to meet the following requirements for a Bachelor of Arts in Economics (80 units).

The Department encourages students to complete the core courses before undertaking the upper division courses, and if possible by the end of the sophomore year.

• Econ 1 (5 units). This is the only Econ core course that may be double-counted .  
• Econ 102A (5 units): it is recommended that students satisfy this basic statistics requirement before proceeding with the rest of the program. Prerequisite: Math 20 or equivalent. Please note: results from the Math Department placement diagnostic exam cannot serve as a substitute for completion of the math prerequisite.**  
• Econ 50 (5 units): basic price theory. Prerequisite: Econ 1 and Math 51 (or CME 100 or CME100A)**.  Students planning to take ECON 50 in Fall 2024 or later should review the updated prerequisites.    
• Econ 51 (5 units): intermediate micro. Prerequisites: Econ 50.  
• Econ 52 (5 units): intermediate macro. Prerequisites: Econ 50.  
• Econ 102B (5 units): econometrics. Prerequisites: Economics 102A.

The material in Econ 102B is used in a number of field courses. Students are advised to take Econ 102B early in their program.

**Students interested in receiving transfer credit or AP score waivers for Math prerequisites should submit the Econ Math Requirements Waiver Petition. 

* Students may only count units from one of the following towards their major as the courses are too similar in content: Econ 141, Econ 140, or Econ 135.

**Students may count toward the econ field course requirement Econ 160, Econ 167G, or 180. The others may count as electives.

***Students enrolled in the Econ BAH may take up to 10 units of 199D. The successful completion of an honors thesis and at least five units of credit in Econ 199D may replace the requirement for Economics 101 (WIM). The remaining units of ECON 199D may be used to meet the minimum field requirements for the major, as long as the number of units for the BAH is at least 85.

Choose from any Econ courses taken for a letter grade.  Up to 10 units of this requirement may be fulfilled by upper division math, statistics and computer science courses. Approved courses include: MATH 113, 114, 115, 118, 120, 136, 151, 161, 163, 171, 172, 175 and STATS 200, 202, 206, 207, 208, 209, 209A, 217, 218, 219, 221, 222, 237, 240, 315B and CS 161, 221, 224M, 227B, 228, 229, ACCT 152, GSBGEN 336 and PoliSci 110C. Click here for a full list of Approved Course Petitions

• A maximum of 10 elective units may be made up of some combination of the following: transfer credit, Econ 139D: Directed Reading, approved non-econ courses, or approved BOSP/SIW/SINY courses.
• Suitable transfer credit must be approved in writing by the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
• Students may only count Econ 135 or 140 toward major requirements because they are very similar.
• Students may only count Econ 143 or 148 toward major requirements because they are very similar.
• Students may count only Econ 160 or 180 toward field requirements, the other may be counted toward elective requirements.
• Advanced undergraduate majors with strong quantitative preparation may enroll in graduate (200-level) courses with the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies and the course instructor.
• The department does not give credit for internships. Thus Econ 139D: Directed Reading, cannot be used to obtain credit for internships.

Econ 101 (5 units). This course fulfills the Writing in the Major requirement. Any WIM course for Economics may be taken only after completing Econ 51, 52, 102B and at least two field courses.

The Economics Capstone is comprised of two parts: 

1. During their junior year, declared Econ students will be required to complete an ePortfolio of their work in the major. They will then need to meet with their advisor to discuss their ePortfolio and receive a grade for their work. More information about this requirement is available in the ePortfolio Student Guide.

2. Graduating seniors are required to enroll in ECON 101 as their final capstone course. This class fulfills the WIM requirement, as well as completing the Capstone project. Enrollment in ECON 101 is by permission only. Students who anticipate that they will be graduating in the following year will be asked to submit their preferences for the ECON 101 sections in late Spring-Early Summer of the year before. Preference forms will be available on the Economics Department Website, and students will be notified by email when they are available. 

More information and form links can be found under the Capstone Page of the Economics Department Website.

The  Economics Common Syllabus  explains econ course management policies.

• At least 55 of the 80 units required for the major must be taken at Stanford in California.  
• No courses receiving Department of Economics credit under the preceding requirements may be taken CR/NC.
• Math 51 (or CME 100 or CME100A) is a prerequisite for an Economics degree. It may be taken for credit to meet the Econ 50 prerequisite.
• Students scoring a 5 on both the advanced placement (AP) microeconomics and macroeconomics tests or a score of 7 on International Baccalaureate (IB) higher level economics test may petition the Director of Undergraduate Studies to have the ECON 1 course requirement waived.  Students do not receive units credit for placing out of ECON 1.  
• A grade point average (GPA) of C= (2.0) or better must be received for all units applied toward the Major.  
• To use transfer credit in partial satisfaction of the requirements, the student must obtain written consent from the department's Director of Undergraduate Study, who will establish the amount of credit to be granted toward the department requirements.  
• The maximum time limit for satisfactory completion of a course is one year from the date a grade of incomplete ("I") is given. Instructors may require that a course is completed anytime up to the one-year time limit. Students are responsible for seeing that all grades of incomplete are cleared within the time limit. The university's rule is that a grade of incomplete that is not cleared within the time limit becomes a grade of NP.  
• Students must complete their declaration of the major no later than the last day of the quarter, one quarter before anticipated degree conferral.

You are encouraged to read the  Information Book for Econ Majors for detailed information about the program.

Law and Economics

Jd/ma, jd/phd.

A degree that blends expertise in law and economics enables lawyers to have an impact on a wide range of issues related to law, business, and finance. Judges and practitioners increasingly rely on economic reasoning to resolve legal disputes. In some areas of legal practice—especially antitrust law, tax law, bankruptcy, corporate and securities law, and other fields of economic law—economic reasoning is often central to the focus of legal arguments, and it continues to grow in importance in many other seemingly non-economic fields, such as environmental law, intellectual property law, health law, and more.

With a superb economics department , top-ranked economists in the Graduate School of Business , and a law school oriented toward interdisciplinary education and research, Stanford offers an ideal learning environment for studying law and economics. Faculty who lead in their fields are a key Stanford asset; the university is proud to claim eight Nobel laureates in economics.

A Stanford JD/MA in law and economics can support a career in virtually any area of legal practice, including corporate law, tort law, contract law, civil procedure, and international law. Students who pursue a Stanford JD/PhD in this area receive strong background for an academic career or work in the private sector or government.

Course Requirements

For the JD/MA program, as many as 45 quarter units of approved courses may be counted toward both degrees. For the JD/PhD program, as many as 54 quarter units of approved courses may be counted toward both degrees. In either case, no more than 31 quarter units of courses that originate outside the law school may count toward the law degree.

The maximum number of law school credits that may be counted toward the MA or PhD in economics is the greater of: (i) 5 quarter units in the case of the MA and 10 quarter units in the case of the PhD; or (ii) the maximum number of units from courses outside the department that MA or PhD candidates in economics are permitted to count toward the applicable degree under general departmental guidelines or in the case of a particular student’s individual program.

Note to applicants:  The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program awards full funding to Stanford graduate students from all disciplines, with additional opportunities for leadership training and collaboration across fields. Joint Degree applicants are encouraged to apply to the  Knight – Hennessy Scholars Program.  Please be aware that the Knight-Hennessy Scholars applications are due in early Autumn one year prior to enrollment. View dates and deadlines: knight-hennessy.stanford.edu/dates-and-deadlines .

At this point in my career, I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I owe it to my Stanford joint degree. I had enormous flexibility to tailor the program to my academic and professional goals, making it easy to move between two academic homes and do the research I wanted to do.

Gillian Hadfield, JD/PhD in Law and Economics, '88

Joseph Bankman

• Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business

Richard Craswell

• Professor of Law, Emeritus

Robert M. Daines

• Pritzker Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus

Ronald J. Gilson

• Charles J. Meyers Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus

Joseph A. Grundfest

• W. A. Franke Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus
• Senior Faculty, Rock Center for Corporate Governance

Daniel P. Kessler

• Professor of Law
• Keith and Jan Hurlbut Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Michael Klausner

• Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business

Mark A. Lemley

• William H. Neukom Professor of Law
• Director, Program in Law, Science & Technology

Alison D. Morantz

• James and Nancy Kelso Professor of Law
• Director of SIDDLAPP
• Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research

A. Mitchell Polinsky

• Josephine Scott Crocker Professor of Law and Economics

Jeff Strnad

• Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law

Alan O. Sykes

• Professor of Law and Warren Christopher Professor in the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy
• Senior Fellow, SIEPR

Barbara van Schewick

• M. Elizabeth Magill Professor of Law
• Director, Center for Internet and Society
• Professor, by courtesy, Electrical Engineering

The Economics of Technology Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Professional advice, advice for applying to grad school in economics.

Disclaimer: These are just opinions, and some people may disagree with the claims here. You should seek opinions from your advisors.

Choosing classes

• Graduate schools care much more about what hard classes you’ve taken and how you’ve done in them than about overall GPA.
• If you have taken difficult classes its probably a good idea to point this out in your application essay because schools might not know what the math classes are, which economics classes are the advanced ones, etc.
• Real analysis is an especially important class because it tends to be demanding everywhere, and forces you to do logical and formal proofs. Get a good grade in this class.
• Taking some graduate classes can be a good thing, but be prepared. You will be at a disadvantage since the grad students will all have study groups. Try to join a study group and devote serious time to any graduate classes you take. More and more applicants are taking graduate classes.
• Students from top universities who have the bare minimum coursework (an undergraduate major, no graduate economics or math classes, and only basic undergraduate math classes) will need something really outstanding—like a thesis that is publishable in a top economics field journal—to get fellowships at the top two or three graduate programs. Typically the strongest applicants have some distinguishing feature, like scoring near the top of a graduate class at a top PhD program, very strong math (e.g. graduate level real analysis and topology), or an outstanding thesis or coauthored research.
• Undergraduate classes at most U.S. universities are much easier than graduate classes. To be a strong applicant you should be getting mostly or all As in undergraduate economics classes—with grade inflation even A-‘s are not going to help you. Some poor grades your freshman year won’t disqualify you though, doing really well in very advanced classes will more than compensate.

Recommendation letters

• Recommendations which are not from economists have very little value. Recommendations from economists who have contacts at the schools you are applying to are most useful. However, one letter from someone you have worked for after undergrad may be useful to document your work ethic, maturity, etc.
• Get recommendations from people who know you well. 
• Corollary: Get to know some professors well. Professors will be very excited that you want to get a Ph.D. in economics. Don’t be afraid to approach them. Listen to their advice.
• Give professors every possible opportunity to say they don’t feel comfortable recommending you to the school you’re applying to. If they express any hesitation don’t have them send it. One bad letter hurts much more than any good letters can help. A letter that mentions a poor work ethic, or basically almost any substantive negative, probably spells death at the best programs.
• It’s fine to have a letter from someone you worked for even if they didn’t teach you in a class.
• If you do not have relationships with economics professors (e.g. you are a math major) or if you attend a college or university without faculty that have connections at the top Ph.D. programs, you still have a good chance of admission if the rest of your application is stellar. Just be aware that objective criteria such as GRE scores, grades in hard math classes, and essays will receive more weight, and make sure that you do everything you can to help the admissions committee evaluate your record.
• Your professors’ letters will be most effective if they compare you specifically to other students in top graduate schools. This is especially important if your professors do not have personal relationships with the faculty at the top programs. The admissions committee needs to be able to calibrate the content of the letter. To get into Harvard or MIT, the letter probably needs to be pretty explicit that the student is comparable to other students who have been to those programs and succeeded. For foreign students, where transcripts are particularly hard to evaluate, these comparative statements carry a lot of weight. The comparative statements should be backed up with reasoning—such as comparing analytic abilities, coursework, the quality of the thesis, etc. You can tell your recommender about this site since you don’t want to tell them what to do!

Application Essays

• On your graduate school application its very important to write an essay saying what kinds of areas of economics you’re interested in, what questions you think are interesting, what papers you’ve read that you’ve liked etc. Be as specific as possible. It may be helpful to discuss your thesis or research assistant work. Its not necessary to have a specific thesis proposal, and odds are if you try to pretend you have one when you really don’t you’ll come off as sounding naive which is a bad thing. Mostly schools just read these to see what field you’re interested in and to get a sense whether you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into. You should therefore try to talk intelligently about your topic of interest to show that you understand something about what research in that field would be like.
• Get someone to read your essays, preferably an advanced graduate student or a faculty member.
• Application essays for NSF fellowships have typically been judged differently. They seem to want a specific thesis proposal and value clear brief surveys of the existing literature, a clear statement of what you’d like to add to this, a discussion of data sets you might want to use etc. They don’t like vague statements about liking economics, and don’t seem to mind that people aren’t really going to do what they say.

NSF Fellowships 

• Every student applying to graduate school should apply for an NSF fellowship. Winning one gives you a much better financial deal than any school will offer. Even if you don’t win just the fact that you applied will increase the probability of your being accepted by graduate schools.
• Don’t be surprised to find that the fellowships are only weakly influenced by grades and GRE scores. The essays matter a lot.
• Even if its questionable whether your eligible go ahead and apply. The rules seem to change a lot.
• Apply from your home address if you attend college in states like Massachusetts or California. There is some allocation by home state, since this is a federal program.

Application timing

• As long as its in by the deadline it doesn’t matter. It is an advantage to have your folder be complete very soon after the deadline, which means making sure your recommenders get their letters in.
• Though the test is not necessarily a good predictor of success, it matters a lot (especially the quantitative portion). Studying for the GRE dramatically increases your scores so you should definitely practice.
• The economics GRE doesn’t usually count for much, but it does give a chance for people who haven’t taken much economics to make a positive impression.

Financial statements

• Its hard to generalize on what you should do on these. At Harvard, for example, its always best to make it seem like you have money because their administration has a rule that they can’t accept people without offering them enough money to come. As a result they often reject people who at the end of the process they would have preferred to people they give money to. At other schools, if you seem to have a lot of money it may reduce the size of the fellowship offer you get. It may also, however, increase the probability of getting accepted because a school with a few partial fellowships to offer will give them only to people who seem to have the resources to accept them.
• Back to Top

Where to Apply

• If you are well-qualified, you should apply to all of the top-ranked economics departments (e.g. MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Chicago, Yale, Berkeley), and several backup schools, depending on the strength of your record. You should definitely seek advice from faculty members on this. 
• If you have a somewhat weaker record, there are lots of good graduate programs out there, but you need to shop more carefully for schools that have well-known advisors or have recently been investing a lot in graduate students. Some middle-ranked schools (like recently Pennsylvania State) aggressively recruit prospective students and have placed graduating PhD students in top 5 schools by investing heavily in the students. You need to do a lot of homework, and talk to lots of faculty about good places to apply. Information about good places to go is likely to be dispersed.
• Don’t overlook the small but prestigious PhD programs at business schools: Stanford GSB has a placement record that rivals the top economics departments, and Harvard and Northwestern also have programs worth looking into. These programs typically offer more individual attention and have more generous funding.
• The applicant pool seems to be getting more sophisticated and well prepared all the time, so if you have something like a more “typical” undergraduate background (undergraduate major, a couple of math classes, a thesis, mostly As), you need to cast a fairly wide net. If you have more than a couple of B’s you need to cast wider still.

Visits and Contacts at Graduate Schools

• With rare exceptions, you SHOULD NOT initiate contact with faculty members at schools you are applying to before the admissions decisions. You will seem like a pest and like someone who doesn’t understand the system. After you are admitted there will be plenty of opportunities to meet faculty. If you feel like you have an exceptional case for contacting a faculty member at another school, seek the advice of your advisor first.
• After admission you should visit your top choices if at all possible. You will learn an enormous amount then, swamping what you have managed to figure out before then.
• Talk to the students to learn how often they meet with their advisors, who is really accessible, and how the morale is among students. Some faculty do a lot of aggressive recruiting but don’t spend a lot of time with their students later. The current students can tell you how advising really works. 
• Anyone who tells you that one department is best for every student is not being very thoughtful. You need to determine whether a department feels right to you, and whether you feel like there are a set of potential advisors for you. Your advisor will have enormous power over your life. You need to be comfortable. Different departments have different strengths, cultures, and styles. Some fields within departments have very strong subcultures and impressive placement records. Learn about those.
• Find out about the placement records of the programs. Don’t just find out about the top 5 students–find out about how number 10 or 15 in a class did, and whether they were happy. Even if you are quite certain you will be a star, it’s possible  you won’t be the very best, and even if you are, it will be a lot more fun if your classmates aren’t unemployed, despondent and neglected.
• Don’t get too caught up in overall stereotypes. Faculty and students all get very enthusiastic about grad student recruiting and tend to over-emphasize differences among programs. There are many more similarities than differences across top programs, and every department has fields with very different advising styles. In the end you need to find two or three advisors and a couple of good student buddies. A department with more outstanding faculty and students makes it more likely you will find your matches, but the subculture of your friends and advisors is far more salient to your life than the overall department.

Information for Seniors

Letters of recommendation.

When you need me to write letters for you, I need the following (you can email me the info in text, Microsoft Word, or PDF): your resume, a copy of whatever you are sending to the grad school or employer, including essays,and a short, informal paragraph providing me with any additional material for the letter. This paragraph can include info about your summer job and how it prepared you for grad school/employment; it’s your chance to let me know anything extra that you would like the letter to include. Don’t stress about this, I’ll only use it to help you.

Email my  faculty assistant , at least a month before your first deadline, to have her block 2 hours on my calendar for writing the letter. Send me your supporting material before that scheduled time so I can refer to it when writing the letter.

When I send out the letter, I will email you confirmation. YOU SHOULD NOT ASSUME THAT I HAVE SENT OUT A LETTER UNTIL YOU GET EMAIL CONFIRMATION—this is my way of making sure I don’t miss any deadlines! If you haven’t heard from me and the deadline is tomorrow, *please* double check. (Don’t worry, I’ve never had any problems, but when there are lots of letters to go out things get complicated).

Career Planning

For job searches, I’m not sure how much I have to add. Talk to each other and use all of the resources available to you! For a price, www.wetfeet.com  can provide booklets for most of the major consulting firms, I-banks, etc.

For grad school, however, I have more advice…

Grad School

See “Advice for Applying to Grad Schools in Economics” in the left column.

Further thoughts: If you are planning to apply to grad school, but not for a year or two, you still need to do some things this year. Figure out who your letter writers will be, and meet with them individually, telling them about your plans. Some of them might prefer to write a letter now or make notes, so they will remember in a few year’s time.

If you are applying to grad school this fall, now is the time to plan out your schedule.

• When are the applications due? Do they fall right on top of final exams? If so, plan ahead. In particular, when are fellowship applications due? These typically come earlier than the grad school deadlines. The NSF deadline is early in the fall. Since funding makes a huge difference in grad school, don’t miss any opportunity to apply. Have you taken all of the relevant tests?
• Who are the professors who will be writing your letters? You typically need at least three. Have you seen all of them recently? Do they know about your plans for grad school? Some professors will feel more involved if you ask them for advice. It is important that they know you are serious about grad school, that you understand what it is all about, and that you are qualified. Make sure this comes across when you meet with them. Check with them now about writing letters,this gives you plenty of time to seek out someone else if they seem hesitant(if someone says, “gee, I’m not sure I know you very well” that is a bad sign).
• What are you going to write about in your essays? For a PhD program, these usually require a description of your past research experience and your future research interests. Some students will have a thesis or a summer research project to report on—that is terrific. The essays flow nicely when you can relate this project to your future work. The main thing people are looking for here is that you know what grad school is all about and that you understand what research is. It also helps if you include a sentence or two which indicates why a given school is good for you—this can be as simple as naming the faculty in the field. But be careful here—make sure your information is up to date, and check it out with a faculty member here. For economics, they could care less if you actually do what you say you are going to do in the essay, but in some of the sciences, the information might be relevant for matching you to specific labs or sources of funding. Talking about the essay with your letter-writers is a good way for them to get up to date with your interests, and to get feedback. You should definitely get at least one faculty member to review your essay: trust me on this. That means getting it done early. You’ll be surprised at how hard it is to write 2 pages.
• Don’t forget to allow time in the spring to go and visit the programs you are interested in, for interviews if required (i.e. med school), or to meet the faculty (PhD programs). Visiting is essential for figuring out a good match, and you can make contacts that might help you later!

I hope this helps. Good luck!

Stanford University

Stanford Health Policy is a joint effort of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford School of Medicine

Health Policy and Economics

The Stanford Health Policy community is comprised of physicians, economists and decision scientists who study questions of domestic and global policy. From the cost-effectiveness and social impact of U.S. foreign aid to the impact of gun violence on public health, our researchers assess a broad range of important policy questions here at home and around the world.

Laurence Baker , PhD, Professor of Health Policy and the Bing Professor of Human Biology. An economist, Baker is interested in the organization and economic performance of the U.S. health-care system, such as financial incentives in health care, competition in health-care markets, health insurance and managed care, and health-care technology adoption.

Jay Bhattacharya , MD, PhD, Professor of Health Policy and an economist who focuses on the constrains that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations. His textbook,  Health Economics , is used widely by academics and students nationwide.

David Chan , MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Health Policy, a physician and economist whose research draws on insights from labor and organizational economics. He is particularly interested in studying what drives physician behavior, how this explains differences in productivity in health care delivery, and what the implications are for the design of health care.

Grant Miller , PhD, Professor of Health Policy and Professor of Economics (by courtesy), a health and development economist focused on research and teaching aimed at developing more effective health improvement strategies for developing countries.

Maria Polyakova , PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Policy, investigates questions surrounding the role of government in the design and financing of health insurance systems.

Maya Rossin-Slater , PhD, Associate Professor of Health Policy whose research combines health, public, and labor economics. She focuses on issues in maternal and child well-being, family structure and behavior, and policies targeting disadvantaged populations in the United States and other developed countries.

Adrienne Sabety , PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Policy who researches health care and the social determinants of health. 

Title Health and Aging

ECON-MA - Economics (MA)

Program overview.

An MA degree may only be pursued in combination with a doctoral degree from Economics or another department at the university. Students must be enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford before adding the Economics MA degree. Economics students may, but need not, elect to add this degree to their current PhD degree after they have been enrolled at Stanford for at least one quarter. 

Non-economics PhD students must have completed Stanford University requirements for a BA in Economics or approximately equivalent training. Since non-Econ PhD students are required to take some of the same courses as Economics PhD candidates, similar preparation in mathematics and statistics is generally expected before the petition to add the MA is approved.  

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Charles I. Jones

The STANCO 25 Professor of Economics

Research statement.

Charles I. Jones is The STANCO 25 Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Jones has been honored as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a co-editor of Econometrica . He is currently the area coordinator for the economics group at Stanford GSB. Professor Jones is the author of numerous research papers as well as two textbooks, Introduction to Economic Growth (2013) and Macroeconomics (2020).

Academic Degrees

• PhD in Economics, MIT, 1993
• AB, Summa cum laude, in Economics, Harvard University, 1989

Academic Appointments

• At Stanford University since 2008
• Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2002–present
• Associate Professor and Professor, Department of Economics, UC Berkeley, 2001–08
• Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Stanford University, 1993–2001

Awards and Honors

• The Chai-Siriwatwechakul Faculty Fellow, 2022–23
• Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2019–present
• Fellow of the Econometric Society, 2020–present
• Charles and Melissa Froland Faculty Fellow, 2017–20

Degree Courses

Executive education & other non-degree programs, stanford gsb affiliations.

• Faculty Affiliate King Center on Global Development

Stanford University Affiliations

• Senior Fellow Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

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Admissions & Aid

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You are here

Application requirements for all doctoral programs (phd).

All of our doctoral programs are designed to develop outstanding educational researchers who have a deep understanding of the scientific, practical and policy issues they study. All require full-time study, and we promise five years of full-time financial support for every student we admit. Our doctoral programs are small, typically ranging from about 25 to 35 new students a year. The small size of our doctoral cohorts creates big educational advantages for students: the classes are almost always small, students receive individualized attention from their advisors, and they have many opportunities to develop close collegial relationships with fellow students.

It is extremely important to demonstrate in your statement of purpose that your interests converge closely with the current research of faculty who work in the program to which you are applying. Other doctoral applicants will certainly do this, and if you don't, you will forfeit an important competitive advantage to them. 

If you wish to contact faculty, please read our Which Degree Which Program article, by Professor Eamonn Callan, which outlines the appropriate process for contacting faculty with whom you share research interests. 

• Program website:  Degrees and Programs/PhD
• Length of Program:  5 years (average length)
• Tuition: fellowship/assistantship salary and tuition guaranteed for first five years of the program (autumn, winter and spring quarters) for all students, including international students. Funding includes two summers.

Application Requirements:

Application form.

Complete and submit Stanford's graduate online application .

Application Fee

The application fee is $125 , is non-refundable, and must be received by the application deadline.

Application Fee Waivers

Stanford offers three types of application fee waivers for which GSE applicants may apply and be considered:

• GRE Fee Reduction Certificate-Based Waiver
• Diversity Program Participation-Based Waiver
• School-Based Waiver

Please visit the Stanford Graduate Diversity website for instructions, deadlines, and the fee waiver application form.

Statement of Purpose

A Statement of Purpose is required. Your statement should be typed, single-spaced and should be between one to two pages . Describe succinctly your reasons for applying to the proposed program, your preparation for this field of study, and why our program is a good fit for you, your future career plans, and other aspects of your background as well as interests which may aid the admissions committee in evaluating your aptitude and motivation for graduate study. You may indicate potential faculty mentors as part of your study and research interests. Be sure to keep a copy for your records. What's a Good Statement of Purpose?

A resume or CV  is required of all applicants, depending on which document is most appropriate for your background. There is no page limit for resumes or CVs, though we typically see resumes of one page in length. Please upload your resume or CV in the online application.

Three (3) Letters of Recommendation

Applicants are required to submit three letters of recommendation . In the online application, you will be asked to identify your recommenders and their email addresses. Please notify your recommenders that they will receive an email prompt to submit their recommendation online. You can submit your request for letters of recommendation through the system without submitting the entire online application.  Stanford GSE only accepts online recommendations through the application system ; Stanford GSE cannot accept mailed, emailed or faxed recommendations.

Recommendations should be written by people who have supervised you in an academic, employment, or community service setting. We very strongly recommend that at least one of these letters be from a university professor familiar with your academic work. Your recommendations should directly address your suitability for admission to a graduate program at Stanford GSE.

It is the applicant's responsibility to ensure that all three letters of recommendation are submitted through the system by the application deadline , so please work closely with your recommenders to remind them of the deadline.

College and University Transcripts

Transcripts are required from every college and university you have attended for at least one academic year as a full-time student. When submitting your online application, transcripts should be uploaded to the application as a scanned copy or PDF ; this is sufficient for the application review process. Please refrain from sending a secured PDF/transcript with a digital signature as our system cannot upload these properly. The best way to ensure we receive an upload-able document is for you to print out the secured transcript, scan it, and upload the scanned copy (not to exceed 10MB) as a PDF. 

If you earned a degree at the institution from which you are submitting a transcript, please ensure that the degree conferral date and the degree conferred is clearly visible on the document. If you are currently enrolled in a degree program and will not have earned the respective degree by the time of submitting your GSE application, you should submit your most recent in-progress transcript from your institution.

Only if admitted will we contact you with instructions on sending two copies of your official transcripts to our office. We cannot accept mailed, emailed or faxed copies of your transcripts during the application process. Please note: the instructions for sending transcripts on the online application and on the general Stanford Graduate Admissions Office website differ from this Stanford GSE requirement.

Concerning course work completed in a study abroad program

If the coursework and grades are reflected on the transcript of your home institution, you do not need to submit original transcripts from the study abroad institution.

Concerning foreign institutions

If your institution provides a transcript in a language other than English, we require that you submit a translation of the transcript that is either provided by the institution or a certified translator. Translations must be literal and complete versions of the original records.

If your transcript does not include your degree conferral date and the degree conferred , please submit a scanned copy of your diploma, a conferral statement, or a conferral document in addition to your transcript . If you are currently enrolled in a degree program and will not have earned the respective degree by the time of submitting your GSE application, you should submit your most recent in-progress transcript from your institution.

Stanford University requires the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) from all applicants whose native language is not English. The GSE requires a minimum TOEFL score of 250 for the computer-based test, 600 for the paper-based test or 100 for the internet-based test in order to be considered for admission. The Test of Written English (TWE) portion of the TOEFL is not required. Applicants who have completed a four-year bachelor's degree or a two-year master's program (or its equivalent) in the U.S. or at an institution where English is the main language of instruction are not required to take the TOEFL. For more information on TOEFL requirements, please refer to the Required Exams  page on the main Stanford Graduate Admissions website. You may register for the TOEFL test directly at the ETS website .

TOEFL Dates and Deadlines

PhD applicants who are required to take the TOEFL should plan to take the internet-based TOEFL test and have official TOEFL scores sent electronically to Stanford at institution code 4704 (department code does not matter) no later than November 1 . This will give your official TOEFL scores time to be sent from ETS and be received by our system in time for the December 1 deadline. PhD applicants to Knight-Hennessy Scholars should plan to take the internet-based TOEFL test no later than October 16 so your scores can be received by our system in time for the November 16 KHS GSE deadline. Please note that the TOEFL may be taken no earlier than 18 months prior to the application deadline.

Does Stanford accept tests other than TOEFL?

No. We accept only TOEFL scores; we do not accept IELTS or other test scores.

Contact Information

Admissions:  [email protected]  

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© Stanford University , Stanford , California 94305 .

Associate Professor of Health Policy and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

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David Chan, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Health Policy at the Stanford School of Medicine, an investigator at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Drawing on labor and organizational economics, he is interested in studying how information is used in health care, how this affects productivity, and implications for design. He is the recipient of the 2014 NIH Director’s High-Risk, High-Reward Early Independence Award to study the optimal balance of information in health information technology for patient care. Dr. Chan received master’s degrees in policy and economics from the London School of Economics and Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall scholar. He holds a medical degree from UCLA and a PhD in economics from MIT. He trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, prior to coming to Palo Alto, where he currently is a hospitalist at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Palo Alto.

Academic Appointments

• Associate Professor, Health Policy
• Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)
• Academic [email protected] University - Faculty Department: Health Policy Position: Assoc Professor

Additional Info

• Mail Code: 6019
• Curriculum Vitae PDF

2023-24 Courses

• Topics in Health Economics I ECON 249, HRP 249, MED 249 (Spr)
• Directed Reading in Health Research and Policy HRP 299 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
• Directed Reading in Medicine MED 299 (Aut, Win, Spr)
• Early Clinical Experience in Medicine MED 280 (Aut, Win, Spr)
• Graduate Research HRP 399 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
• Graduate Research MED 399 (Aut, Win, Spr)
• Medical Scholars Research HRP 370 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
• Medical Scholars Research MED 370 (Aut, Win, Spr)
• Second Year Health Policy PHD Tutorial HRP 800 (Aut, Win, Spr)
• Undergraduate Research HRP 199 (Sum)
• Undergraduate Research MED 199 (Aut, Win, Spr)

2022-23 Courses

2021-22 courses, 2020-21 courses, stanford advisees.

• Perry Nielsen
• Orals Chair Ziao Ju
• Postdoctoral Faculty Sponsor Nathaniel Breg

All Publications

View details for DOI 10.1001/jama.2022.8587

View details for PubMedID 35604676

Physicians, judges, teachers, and agents in many other settings differ systematically in the decisions they make when faced with similar cases. Standard approaches to interpreting and exploiting such differences assume they arise solely from variation in preferences. We develop an alternative framework that allows variation in preferences and diagnostic skill and show that both dimensions may be partially identified in standard settings under quasi-random assignment. We apply this framework to study pneumonia diagnoses by radiologists. Diagnosis rates vary widely among radiologists, and descriptive evidence suggests that a large component of this variation is due to differences in diagnostic skill. Our estimated model suggests that radiologists view failing to diagnose a patient with pneumonia as more costly than incorrectly diagnosing one without, and that this leads less skilled radiologists to optimally choose lower diagnostic thresholds. Variation in skill can explain 39% of the variation in diagnostic decisions, and policies that improve skill perform better than uniform decision guidelines. Failing to account for skill variation can lead to highly misleading results in research designs that use agent assignments as instruments.

View details for DOI 10.1093/qje/qjab048

View details for PubMedID 35422677

View details for PubMedCentralID PMC8992547

OBJECTIVE: To measure and compare mortality outcomes between dually eligible veterans transported by ambulance to a Veterans Affairs hospital and those transported to a non-Veterans Affairs hospital.DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study using data from medical charts and administrative files.SETTING: Emergency visits by ambulance to 140 Veteran Affairs and 2622 non-Veteran Affairs hospitals across 46 US states and the District of Columbia in 2001-18.PARTICIPANTS: National cohort of 583248 veterans (aged ≥65 years) enrolled in both the Veterans Health Administration and Medicare programs, who resided within 20 miles of at least one Veterans Affairs hospital and at least one non-Veterans Affairs hospital, in areas where ambulances regularly transported patients to both types of hospitals.INTERVENTION: Emergency treatment at a Veterans Affairs hospital.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Deaths in the 30 day period after the ambulance ride. Linear probability models of mortality were used, with adjustment for patients' demographic characteristics, residential zip codes, comorbid conditions, and other variables.RESULTS: Of 1470157 ambulance rides, 231611 (15.8%) went to Veterans Affairs hospitals and 1238546 (84.2%) went to non-Veterans Affairs hospitals. The adjusted mortality rate at 30 days was 20.1% lower among patients taken to Veterans Affairs hospitals than among patients taken to non-Veterans Affairs hospitals (9.32 deaths per 100 patients (95% confidence interval 9.15 to 9.50) v 11.67 (11.58 to 11.76)). The mortality advantage associated with Veterans Affairs hospitals was particularly large for patients who were black (-25.8%), were Hispanic (-22.7%), and had received care at the same hospital in the previous year.CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that within a month of being treated with emergency care at Veterans Affairs hospitals, dually eligible veterans had substantially lower risk of death than those treated at non-Veterans Affairs hospitals. The nature of this mortality advantage warrants further investigation, as does its generalizability to other types of patients and care. Nonetheless, the finding is relevant to assessments of the merit of policies that encourage private healthcare alternatives for veterans.

View details for DOI 10.1136/bmj-2021-068099

View details for PubMedID 35173019

View details for Web of Science ID 000763802200001

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.chest.2021.12.652

View details for PubMedID 35007551

View details for DOI 10.1257/pol.20180501

View details for Web of Science ID 000615235700004

Importance: Many employers use workplace wellness programs to improve employee health and reduce medical costs, but randomized evaluations of their efficacy are rare.Objective: To evaluate the effect of a comprehensive workplace wellness program on employee health, health beliefs, and medical use after 12 and 24 months.Design, Setting, and Participants: This randomized clinical trial of 4834 employees of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was conducted from August 9, 2016, to April 26, 2018. Members of the treatment group (n=3300) received incentives to participate in the workplace wellness program. Members of the control group (n=1534) did not participate in the wellness program. Statistical analysis was performed on April 9, 2020.Interventions: The 2-year workplace wellness program included financial incentives and paid time off for annual on-site biometric screenings, annual health risk assessments, and ongoing wellness activities (eg, physical activity, smoking cessation, and disease management).Main Outcomes and Measures: Measures taken at 12 and 24 months included clinician-collected biometrics (16 outcomes), administrative claims related to medical diagnoses (diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia) and medical use (office visits, inpatient visits, and emergency department visits), and self-reported health behaviors and health beliefs (14 outcomes).Results: Among the 4834 participants (2770 women; mean [SD] age, 43.9 [11.3] years), no significant effects of the program on biometrics, medical diagnoses, or medical use were seen after 12 or 24 months. A significantly higher proportion of employees in the treatment group than in the control group reported having a primary care physician after 24 months (1106 of 1200 [92.2%] vs 477 of 554 [86.1%]; adjusted P=.002). The intervention significantly improved a set of employee health beliefs on average: participant beliefs about their chance of having a body mass index greater than 30, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and impaired glucose level jointly decreased by 0.07 SDs (95% CI, -0.12 to -0.01 SDs; P=.02); however, effects on individual belief measures were not significant.Conclusions and Relevance: This randomized clinical trial showed that a comprehensive workplace wellness program had no significant effects on measured physical health outcomes, rates of medical diagnoses, or the use of health care services after 24 months, but it increased the proportion of employees reporting that they have a primary care physician and improved employee beliefs about their own health.Trial Registration: American Economic Association Randomized Controlled Trial Registry number: AEARCTR-0001368.

View details for DOI 10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1321

View details for PubMedID 32453346

View details for DOI 10.1257/pandp.20201032

View details for Web of Science ID 000534590600053

View details for DOI 10.1093/qje/qjz005

View details for Web of Science ID 000489162800004

View details for Web of Science ID 000477993600026

View details for DOI 10.1056/NEJMsa1807379

View details for Web of Science ID 000465144100015

BACKGROUND: The Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) of the American Medical Association plays a central role in determining physician reimbursement. The RUC's role and performance have been criticized but subjected to little empirical evaluation.METHODS: We analyzed the accuracy of valuations of 293 common surgical procedures from 2005 through 2015. We compared the RUC's estimates of procedure time with "benchmark" times for the same procedures derived from the clinical registry maintained by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP). We characterized inaccuracies, quantified their effect on physician revenue, and examined whether re-review corrected them.RESULTS: At the time of 108 RUC reviews, the mean absolute discrepancy between RUC time estimates and benchmark times was 18.5 minutes, or 19.8% of the RUC time. However, RUC time estimates were neither systematically shorter nor longer than benchmark times overall (beta, 0.97; 95% confidence interval, 0.94 to 1.01; P=0.10). Our analyses suggest that whereas orthopedic surgeons and urologists received higher payments than they would have if benchmark times had been used ($160 million and $40 million more, respectively, in Medicare reimbursement in 2011 through 2015), cardiothoracic surgeons, neurosurgeons, and vascular surgeons received lower payments ($130 million, $60 million, and $30 million less, respectively). The accuracy of RUC time estimates improved in 47% of RUC revaluations, worsened in 27%, and was unchanged in 25%. (Percentages do not sum to 100 because of rounding.).CONCLUSIONS: In this analysis of frequently conducted operations, we found substantial absolute discrepancies between intraoperative times as estimated by the RUC and the times recorded for the same procedures in a surgical registry, but the RUC did not systematically overestimate or underestimate times. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health.).

View details for PubMedID 30995374

View details for DOI 10.1056/NEJMc1906724

View details for PubMedID 31340110

View details for DOI 10.3982/ECTA13565

View details for Web of Science ID 000434093400006

• The Efficiency of Slacking Off: Evidence from the Emergency Department Econometrica Chan, D. C. 2018 ; Forthcoming

View details for DOI 10.1086/685910

View details for Web of Science ID 000376987700004

To assess the impact of Massachusetts Health Reform (MHR) on access, quality, and costs of outpatient care for the already-insured.Medicare data from before (2006) and after (2009) MHR implementation.We performed a retrospective difference-in-differences analysis of quantity of outpatient visits, proportion of outpatient quality metrics met, and costs of care for Medicare patients with ≥1 chronic disease in 2006 versus 2009. We used the remaining states in New England as controls.We used existing Medicare claims data provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.MHR was not associated with a decrease in outpatient visits per year compared to controls (9.4 prereform to 9.6 postreform in MA vs. 9.4-9.5 in controls, p = .32). Quality of care in MA improved more than controls for hemoglobin A1c monitoring, mammography, and influenza vaccination, and similarly to controls for diabetic eye examination, colon cancer screening, and pneumococcal vaccination. Average costs for patients in Massachusetts increased from $9,389 to $10,668, versus $8,375 to $9,114 in control states (p < .001).MHR was not associated with worsening in access or quality of outpatient care for the already-insured, and it had modest effects on costs. This has implications for other states expanding insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

View details for DOI 10.1111/1475-6773.12228

View details for PubMedID 25219772

Critics of Massachusetts's health reform, a model for the Affordable Care Act, have argued that insurance expansion probably had a negative spillover effect leading to worse outcomes among already insured patients, such as vulnerable Medicare patients. Using Medicare data from 2004 to 2009, we examined trends in preventable hospitalizations for conditions such as uncontrolled hypertension and diabetes--markers of access to effective primary care--in Massachusetts compared to control states. We found that after Massachusetts's health reform, preventable hospitalization rates for Medicare patients actually decreased more in Massachusetts than in control states (a reduction of 101 admissions per 100,000 patients per quarter compared to a reduction of 83 admissions). Therefore, we found no evidence that Massachusetts's insurance expansion had a deleterious spillover effect on preventable hospitalizations among the previously insured. Our findings should offer some reassurance that it is possible to expand access to uninsured Americans without negatively affecting important clinical outcomes for those who are already insured.

View details for DOI 10.1377/hlthaff.2012.1018

View details for Web of Science ID 000316557900017

View details for PubMedID 23459737

Although many patient, physician, and payment predictors of adherence have been described, knowledge of their relative strength and overall ability to explain adherence is limited.To measure the contributions of patient, physician, and payment predictors in explaining adherence to statins.Retrospective cohort study using administrative data.A total of 14,257 patients insured by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey who were newly prescribed a statin cholesterol-lowering medication.Adherence to statin medication was measured during the year after the initial prescription, based on proportion of days covered. The impact of patient, physician, and payment predictors of adherence were evaluated using multivariate logistic regression. The explanatory power of these models was evaluated with C statistics, a measure of the goodness of fit.Overall, 36.4% of patients were fully adherent. Older patient age, male gender, lower neighborhood percent black composition, higher median income, and fewer number of emergency department visits were significant patient predictors of adherence. Having a statin prescribed by a cardiologist, a patient's primary care physician, or a US medical graduate were significant physician predictors of adherence. Lower copayments also predicted adherence. All of our models had low explanatory power. Multivariate models including patient covariates only had greater explanatory power (C = 0.613) than models with physician variables only (C = 0.566) or copayments only (C = 0.543). A fully specified model had only slightly more explanatory power (C = 0.633) than the model with patient characteristics alone.Despite relatively comprehensive claims data on patients, physicians, and out-of-pocket costs, our overall ability to explain adherence remains poor. Administrative data likely do not capture many complex mechanisms underlying adherence.

View details for DOI 10.1097/MLR.0b013e3181c132ad

View details for Web of Science ID 000275198200002

View details for PubMedID 19890219

View details for DOI 10.1257/aer.100.2.292

High costs and unsafe care are major challenges for U.S. hospitals. Two sources of raised costs and unsafe care are adverse events in hospitals and tests ordered by several different physicians. After reviewing rates of these two occurrences in U.S. hospitals and simulating their costs, we estimated that in 2004 alone, eliminating readily preventable adverse events would have resulted in direct savings of more than $16.6 billion (5.5 percent of total inpatient costs). Eliminating redundant tests would have saved an additional $8 billion (2.7 percent). Addressing these situations could generate major savings to the system while improving patient care.

View details for DOI 10.1377/hlthaff.28.5.1475

View details for Web of Science ID 000269646100031

View details for PubMedID 19738266

Many clinical decisions require patient risk stratification. The authors introduce the concept of limiting conditional distributions, which describe the equilibrium proportion of surviving patients occupying each disease state in a Markov chain with death. Such distributions can quantitatively describe risk stratification.The authors first establish conditions for the existence of a positive limiting conditional distribution in a general Markov chain and describe a framework for risk stratification using the limiting conditional distribution. They then apply their framework to a clinical example of a treatment indicated for high-risk patients, first to infer the risk of patients selected for treatment in clinical trials and then to predict the outcomes of expanding treatment to other populations of risk.For the general chain, a positive limiting conditional distribution exists only if patients in the earliest state have the lowest combined risk of progression or death. The authors show that in their general framework, outcomes and population risk are interchangeable. For the clinical example, they estimate that previous clinical trials have selected the upper quintile of patient risk for this treatment, but they also show that expanded treatment would weakly dominate this degree of targeted treatment, and universal treatment may be cost-effective.Limiting conditional distributions exist in most Markov models of progressive diseases and are well suited to represent risk stratification quantitatively. This framework can characterize patient risk in clinical trials and predict outcomes for other populations of risk.

View details for DOI 10.1177/0272989X08330121

View details for Web of Science ID 000268291200015

View details for PubMedID 19336745

Heart failure (HF) disease management programs have shown impressive reductions in hospitalizations and mortality, but in studies limited to short time frames and high-risk patient populations. Current guidelines thus only recommend disease management targeted to high-risk patients with HF.This study applied a new technique to infer the degree to which clinical trials have targeted patients by risk based on observed rates of hospitalization and death. A Markov model was used to assess the incremental life expectancy and cost of providing disease management for high-risk to low-risk patients. Sensitivity analyses of various long-term scenarios and of reduced effectiveness in low-risk patients were also considered.The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of extending coverage to all patients was $9700 per life-year gained in the base case. In aggregate, universal coverage almost quadrupled life-years saved as compared to coverage of only the highest quintile of risk. A worst case analysis with simultaneous conservative assumptions yielded an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $110,000 per life-year gained. In a probabilistic sensitivity analysis, 99.74% of possible incremental cost-effectiveness ratios were <$50,000 per life-year gained.Heart failure disease management programs are likely cost-effective in the long-term along the whole spectrum of patient risk. Health gains could be extended by enrolling a broader group of patients with HF in disease management.

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.ahj.2007.10.001

View details for Web of Science ID 000252812800024

View details for PubMedID 18215605

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