econ phd stanford

Department of Economics

2023-2024 Job Market Candidates

Stanford Economics has 18 candidates on job market this year.

Neale Mahoney appointed as next director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)

Neale Mahoney is succeeding Mark Duggan as SIEPR's Director on January 1, 2025.

Liran Einav on how to reboot U.S. health care in new co-authored book

In his new book co-authored, We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care , Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein propose a makeover of current health care.

Why Study Economics
?

See the reasons why an economics degree is the perfect foundation for whatever you want to do next.

Welcome to our new Ph.D. cohort for 2020-21!

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Nicholas Bloom elected co-vice president of the American Economic Association in 2024

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Monika Piazzesi elected as member of the National Academy of Sciences

Matthew Jackson named fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Seminars and events.

• Health Economics
• Development
• Macroeconomics
• Behavioral and Experimental
• IO, Public, Labor, and Urban Seminar (IOPLUS)
• Public and Environmental Economics

PhD Research Showcase

Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE)

The SITE 2022 Conference takes place this summer from June 30 - September 16 on the Stanford campus with sessions that cover a wide-range of economic topics. Its purpose is to advance economic science for the benefit of society and to support cutting-edge work of economic theorists within specialized areas of research. SITE is accepting paper submissions!

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!

Ilya R. Segal

Department of Economics Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-6072 Tel. (650) 724-4905 [email protected]     http://www.stanford.edu/~isegal/

Academic Positions

· 2002 – present:    Roy and Betty Anderson Professor in the Humanities and Sciences , Department of Economics, Stanford University (Courtesy appointment, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2004-present)

· 1999 – 2002:        Associate Professor of Economics , Stanford University

· 1995 – 1998:        Assistant Professor of Economics , University of California at Berkeley

Visiting Positions

· Visiting Researcher , Microsoft Research Silicon Valley , Summer 2008       

· Member , The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton , 2002-2003

· John Stauffer National Fellow in Public Policy , Hoover Institution, 1998 – 1999

· Visiting Assistant Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Fall 1995

· Pew Foundation Visiting Scholar, Harvard University, 1991-92

· Harvard University , Ph.D., Economics, 1995. Advisors: Eric Maskin , Oliver Hart , Andrei Shleifer

· Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology , M.S., Applied Mathematics, 1991

Honors, Awards, Grants

· 2018 INFORMS Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research, and Management Science , as part of an interdisciplinary team designing the F.C.C.’s Incentive Auction

· American Academy of Arts and Sciences Member, elected in 2017

· Emerald Publishing Citation of Excellence for “the most highly cited and influential papers” (joint with Alessandro Pavan and Juuso Toikka ), 2017

· Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory Fellow, elected in 2013

· Compass Lexecon Prize for “the most significant contribution to the understanding and implementation of competition policy” (joint with Michael Whinston ), 2008

· Toulouse Network on Information Technology , Member, 2005-2017

· Econometric Society Fellow, elected in 2003

· John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship , 2002-2003

· Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship , 1999-2001

· National Science Foundation Research Grants 1998-2000 , 2000-2002 , 2002-2004 , 2004-2005 , 2004-2006 , 2010-2012

· Review of Economic Studies European Tour , 1995

· Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 1994-95

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles   

• “ Clock   Auctions and Radio Spectrum Reallocation ,” with Paul Milgrom , Journal of Political Economy , forthcoming
• “ Robustly Optimal Auctions with Unknown Resale Opportunities ,” with Gabriel Carroll , Review of Economic Studies , forthcoming
• “ Economics and Computer Science of a Radio Spectrum Reallocation ,” with Kevin Leyton-Brown and Paul Milgrom , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 114 (28), 2017, pp. 7202–7209
• “ Property Rights and the Efficiency of Bargaining ,” with Michael Whinston , Journal of European Economic Association , 14(6), 2016, pp. 1287–1328
• “ What Makes them Click: Empirical Analysis of Consumer Demand for Internet Search Advertising ,” with Przemyslaw Jeziorski , American Economic Journal: Microeconomics , 7(3), 2015, pp. 24-53.
• “ Dynamic Mechanism Design: A Myersonian Approach ,” with Alessandro Pavan and Juuso Toikka , Econometrica 82(2), 2014, pp. 601–653.
• “ An Efficient Dynamic Mechanism ,” with Susan Athey , Econometrica , 81(6) , 2013 , pp.2463–2485
• “ A Simple Status Quo that Ensures Participation (with Application to Efficient Bargaining) ,” with Michael Whinston , Theoretical Economics 6(1), 2011, pp. 109-125
• “ Optimal Information Disclosure ,” with Luis Rayo , Journal of Political Economy 118(5), 2010, pp. 949-987
•   “ Nash Implementation with Little Communication ,” Theoretical Economics 5(1), 2010, pp.51-71
• “ The Communication Cost of Selfishness ,” with Ronald Fadel, Journal of Economic Theory 144, 2009, pp. 1895-920
•   “ Antitrust in Innovative Industries ,” with Michael Whinston , American Economic Review 97(5), 2007, pp. 1703-1730
• “ The Communication Requirements of Social Choice Rules and Supporting Budget Sets , ” Journal of Economic Theory 136, September 2007, pp. 341-378
• “ Auctions with Severely Bounded Communication ,” with Liad Blumrosen and Noam   Nisan , Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 28, March 2007, pp. 233-266
• “ The Communication Requirements of Efficient Allocations and Supporting Prices , ” with Noam Nisan , Journal of Economic Theory 129(1), July 2006, pp. 192-224

·          “ Robust Predictions for Bilateral Contracting with Externalities ,” with Michael Whinston , Econometrica , 71(3) 2003, pp. 757-791

·      “ Optimal Pricing Mechanisms with Unknown Demand ,” American Economic Review 93(3), 2003, pp. 509-529

·     “ Collusion, Exclusion, and Inclusion in Random-Order Bargaining ,” Review of Economic Studies 70(2), 2003, pp. 439-460

·     “ Coordination and Discrimination in Contracting with Externalities: Divide and Conquer? ” Journal of Economic Theory 113(2), 2003, pp. 147-181

·     “ Communication Complexity and Coordination by Authority ,” Advances in Theoretical Economics , forthcoming

·     “ Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets ,” with Paul Milgrom , Econometrica 70(2), 2002, pp. 583-601

·     “ The Mirrlees Approach to Mechanism Design with Renegotiation (with Applications to Hold-Up and Risk Sharing) ,” with Michael Whinston , Econometrica 70(1), 2002, pp. 1-45

·     “ Exclusive Contracts and Protection of Investments ,” with Michael Whinston , RAND Journal of Economics 31(4), 2000, pp. 603-633

·     “ Naked Exclusion: Comment ,” with Michael Whinston , American Economic Review 90(1), 2000, pp. 296-309

·     “ Contracting with Externalities ,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(2), 1999, pp. 337-388

·     “ Complexity and Renegotiation: A Foundation for Incomplete Contracts ,” Review of Economic Studies 66(1) , 1999, pp. 57-82

·     “ Monopoly and Soft Budget Constraint ,” RAND Journal of Economics 29(3), Autumn 1998, pp. 596-609

Refereed Conference Proceedings

·          “ Exponential Communication Inefficiency of Demand Queries ," with Noam Nisan , Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge X, June 2005, pp. 158-164

·     “ The Communication Cost of Selfishness: Ex Post Implementation ,” with Ronald Fadel, Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge X, June 2005, pp. 165-76

·          “ Multi-Player and Multi-Round Auctions with Severely Bounded Communication ," with Liad Blumrosen and Noam Nisan , European Symposium on Algorithms , September 2003, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2832 Springer 2003, ISBN 3-540-20064-9

Invited Contributions

•   “ The Efficiency of Bargaining under Divided Entitlements ,” with Michael Whinston , University of Chicago Law Review 81(1), 2014
• “ Property Rights ,” with Michael Whinston , Handbook of Organizational Economics , ed. by R. Gibbons and J. Roberts, Princeton University Press, 2012

·    Designing Efficient Dynamic Mechanisms for Dynamic Bilateral Trading Games , with Susan Athey , American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings , 97(2), May 2007, pp. 131-6

·    Communication in Economic Mechanisms, in Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Theory and Application, Ninth World Congress (Econometric Society Monographs), ed. by Richard Blundell, Whitney K. Newey, and Torsten Persson, Cambridge University Press, 2006

·      Communication Requirements of Combinatorial Allocation Problems , in Peter Cramton, Yoav Shoham, and Richard Steinberg (eds.), Combinatorial Auctions, MIT Press, 2006

Other Publications

·     “Public vs. Private Enforcement of Antitrust Law: A Survey” (with Michael Whinston ), European Competition Law Review , 2007, 323-32

·     Solutions Manual for “Microeconomic Theory” by Mas- Colell , Whinston, and Green , 1996, with Chiaki Hara and Steve Tadelis, Oxford University Press

Selected Invited Lectures

· Alfred Marshall Lecture , European Economic Association Meetings , Mannheim, 2015

· Keynote Speaker , Econometric Society Australasian Meetings (Hobart), 2014, Southern California Symposium on Network and Game Theory , 2012

· Plenary Speaker , Midwest Economic Theory and International Trade Meetings, Ann Arbor, Fall 2013

· Semi-Plenary Speaker , 4 th World Congress of the Game Theory Society, Istanbul, 2012

· Lecturer , Summer Schools in Economic Theory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007, 2012

· Invited Speaker , North American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society (Evanston 2012 ), Latin American Meetings of the Econometric Society (Rio de Janeiro 2008 ), 9 th World Congress of the Econometric Society (London 2005 )

Professional Service

· Editor-in-Chief , ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation , April 2017-present

· Associate Editor , Econometrica , 2015-present

· Foreign Editor , Review of Economic Studies , 2010-2016

· Associate Editor , Journal of Economic Theory , 2013-2015

· Co-Organizer , Program on Economics and Computation , Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, Fall 2015

· National Science Foundation Economics Panel, 2008-2010

· Program Committee , Bay Algorithmic Game Theory Symposia, BAGT1-BAGT6 , 2006-2009

· B.E. Journals in Theoretical Economics , Founding Editor, 1999-2005

· American Economic Review , Editorial Board, 2002-2005

· RAND Journal of Economics , Associate Editor, 1998-2006

· Director , Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics , 2003-2005

· Program Committee , North American Meetings of the Econometric Society, Winter 2002 , Winter 2004 , Summer 2004 ; 8th World Congress of the Econometric Society ( August 2000 ); ACM Conference on Economics and Computation ( 2003 , 2008 , 2012 , 2015, 2017), Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge IX (2003)

· Workshop Organizer , Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics ( 2000 , 2001 , 2002 , 2004 ); European Summer Symposium in Economic Theory, Gerzensee , July 2000

· Director of Graduate Studies, Economics Department, 2005-2011

· Stanford University Committee on Libraries, 2004-2007

· Chair of Graduate Admissions, Economics Department, Stanford University, 2004-2005

Languages: Bilingual Russian - English, fluent in Ukrainian, basic knowledge of French 

Last Modified:   TIME \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" March 2, 2019

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Economics seeks to understand choices and their consequences. Why save rather than spend? Why put certain products on sale and charge top dollar for another? Why purchase instead of rent? Researchers and students at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) choose to examine the world and make an impact through the prism of economics. In this ongoing series, we’ve asked them one question: Why econ?

Annamaria Lusardi, Senior Fellow

Emma hou, '24, kwabena donkor, faculty fellow, olivia martin, phd and jd student, arjun ramani, ba '21, ms '22, marshall burke, senior fellow, levi boxell, phd student, david chan, senior fellow, bessie zhang, '23, valerie scimeca, '20, nina buchmann, phd student, petra persson, faculty fellow, aava farhadi '23.

Optimal Long-Run Fiscal Policy with Heterogeneous Agents

Co-authors: Adrien Auclert, Michael Cai, and Matthew Rognlie

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
• Doctoral Dissertation Reader (AC) Jonathan Lee
• 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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Stanford University School of Medicine blog

Are long COVID sufferers falling through the cracks?

Researchers who study long COVID say its debilitating symptoms are often misdiagnosed by clinicians and dismissed by employers or loved ones because so little is known about the new syndrome. The results can be devastating for individuals and their families -- and for the economy.

It reminds Stanford Medicine's Hector Bonilla , MD, of another little-understood condition that the medical world still struggles to treat correctly.

"I've been working on chronic fatigue syndrome for almost eight years; when long COVID came along it was like déjà vu," said Bonilla, a clinical associate professor and an infectious disease physician who is a co-director of the Stanford Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic. "This is nothing new. We've been ignoring these problem for decades -- so it's time to pay attention."

Nearly 1.2 million people have died from COVID-19, accounting for 2.2% of all deaths since the pandemic began, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC believes at least 5,000 people have died from long COVID, but it is trying to get a better account by issuing new autopsy guidelines for reporting long COVID as the cause of death.

Today, an estimated 16 million working-age people have long COVID, 4 million of whom can't work due to the debilitating symptoms. One of the worst things a long COVID patient can hear from their primary care physician, said Bonilla, is that they just need more sleep and to improve their diet and exercise. This attitude, he said, recalls the early days of CFS, when more physical activity was a common recommendation.

Long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms are similar: severe exhaustion, brain fog, chest pain, coughing and difficulty breathing. Some patients experience cardiac and gastrointestinal issues, as well as loss of taste and smell and elevated levels of depression and anxiety.

Bonilla was joined recently by Gopi Shah Goda , PhD, a health economist who is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at the Stanford Health Policy Forum on long COVID . While she is researching the economic impact of the syndrome, Bonilla is focused on helping patients and letting them know they are not alone.

"You have to validate them," Bonilla said. "You have to say, 'Yes, I hear you and you are not alone; there are millions of people with the same problems you're having.'"

He said he's seen patients who have lost their homes and are living out of their cars, couples who are divorcing because one spouse doesn't believe the other is truly sick.

The economic impact

Goda calculates that on top of the quarter-million people of working age who died from COVID-19, at least twice that number have disappeared from the workforce. In a study published by the Journal of Public Economics , Goda estimates the average individual earnings loss due to long COVID-19 is $9,000 and the total lost labor supply has amounted to $62 billion annually.

That's nearly half of the estimated productivity losses from cancer or diabetes. Yet, the Stanford experts say, those diseases receive billions of research dollars annually while long COVID research remains woefully underfunded.

"If you think about the budgets for some of the parts of the NIH [National Institutes of Health] that are funding research on cancer and diabetes, it's in the billions, and the amount that has been invested in long COVID is more in the millions," Goda said.

Stanford's long COVID clinic , which opened in May of 2021, received a grant last year of $1 million annually for five years from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to expand access to care for people with long COVID -- particularly those from underserved, rural, vulnerable and minority populations that were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Goda believes many long COVID sufferers are falling through the cracks because clinicians aren't certain how to categorize their illnesses, so workers could be losing out on disability insurance through their employers or Social Security Disability Insurance.

The COVID-19 public health emergency expired in May 2023, and the CDC earlier this month lifted the five-day isolation guidance for those who test positive for COVID-19. Both Bonilla and Goda said they hoped this would not lead to relaxations that make workers more vulnerable, particularly those who have no access to paid leave.

No approved treatment but hope on horizon

Experts say 37% of COVID survivors report having at least one long COVID symptom in the 90 to 180 days after their initial infection.

But like chronic fatigue syndrome, there are no tests or approved treatments for long COVID, though Bonilla said he's seeing some positive results in his clinic by treating patients with off-label, low-dose naltrexone -- a pain reliever and anti-inflammatory -- and low doses of the antipsychotic drug Abilify.

There are also efforts to raise awareness about the need for more research that could lead to a cure. March 15 marked the second annual Long COVID Awareness Day , and the NIH is eager to get people with long COVID to join its CureID   research program.

In addition, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing in January on long COVID, with committee chair Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) acknowledging that Congress needs to do more.

"There's a sense that something is going on in America which is serious that we're not addressing," Sanders said. "So I just want to say to our panelists and all those who are dealing with long COVID: We hear you what you're experiencing, and we take it seriously. We think we Congress has not done anywhere near enough, and we hope to turn that around."

Goda submitted a statement to the committee for that hearing, emphasizing the need for more mitigation policies and programs to help workers remain in the workforce.

More news on long COVID

• Stanford Medicine clinical trial goals: Meet long COVID head-on, treat it and defeat it
• Nasal injections could treat long-term COVID-19-related smell loss
• Lung disease and antibody levels contribute to long COVID, Stanford researchers find

Runaway immune reactions cause long COVID breathing problems

"Despite COVID's harmful impact on the U.S. workforce overall, there are some signs of good news," she said in her statement. "So far, employment and labor force participation rates increased faster among those who report having a disability, likely because of new opportunities to work from home and the tight labor markets."

She noted there are also lower rates of COVID-19 related work absences. Between January and October of 2023, likely COVID-19 related absences from work were 16% higher than pre-pandemic levels. This was a sharp drop from 61% during March 2020 through December 2022.

Still, Bonilla said, while long-COVID may be getting more national recognition, many patients don't have access to health care or live far from clinics, such as native Americans, those in rural communities, and undocumented workers.

"There are people who have no voice, and nobody is talking about them," he said.

Beth Duff-Brown is the communications manager for Stanford Health Policy

Image: Donkeyworx

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Beaverton’s Cameron Brink comes home for March Madness

Stanford forward Cameron Brink (22) reacts after being fouled during the second half the Pac-12 championship game March 10, 2024, in Las Vegas. Brink is from Beaverton and will play in the NCAA women's regionals in Portland this weekend.

Ian Maule / AP

For Cameron Brink, one benefit to playing near her hometown in the NCAA Tournament is grandma’s cooking.

The Stanford All-American is back in the Portland area where she won a pair of state championships in high school. The second-seeded Cardinal face No. 3 North Carolina State on Friday in a Sweet 16 game.

“I got to see my parents last night, my grandma, my dog,” the Beaverton native said. “Life is good. I’m just soaking it all in, for sure.”

The best part? On Wednesday night she had her grandma's pot roast for dinner.

But on Thursday it was back to work for the Cardinal, who are making their 29th Sweet 16 appearance. Stanford has won three NCAA titles, been to 15 Final Fours and made 22 Elite Eights.

The 6-foot-4 Brink is averaging 17.5 points and is ranked third nationally with 11.9 rebounds per game for Stanford. She leads the nation with 120 blocks. In addition to her AP All-America nod, she's also among the finalists for the Naismith Trophy.

Earlier this month, Brink announced that this would be her final season with the Cardinal and she would be declaring for the WNBA draft . Brink could have used a fifth year of eligibility granted by the NCAA because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think to play my last potential game in front of family in Portland at home is bittersweet,” she said Thursday. “But it’s really wonderful. I’m just really happy to be here. I just have a great sense of peace, honestly, being here.”

N.C. State coach Wes Moore joked about being a bit relieved that Brink was moving on — because next season Stanford is headed to the ACC, part of the conference realignment that collapsed the Pac-12 last summer.

“I was hoping I was going to dodge Cameron Brink, but I guess we’ll get to see her,” Moore said. “I know she’s declared she’s leaving, but I guess we’ll get a peek at her.”

Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer knew from the start that Brink was going to be a star. Brink attended a youth camp led by VanDerveer's sister Heidi, currently coach at UC San Diego.

“The first conversation I had [with her], I wasn’t in the room with actually,” VanDerveer laughed. “She came to summer camp, and my sister Heidi was running camp. Cam thought Heidi was me. That’s probably good because Heidi is nicer than me.”

Stanford offered Brink a scholarship when she was in eighth grade — which VanDerveer said Brink mistook for another invitation to camp.

Brink went on and led Southridge High School in Beaverton to two state titles in her her freshman and sophomore seasons. For her senior season, she transferred to Mountainside High School but was hampered by a high ankle sprain.

Cameron Brink, center, looking up, celebrates with Southridge High School teammate after winning the 2018 Oregon state basketball championship at the Chiles Center in Portland, Ore., March 10, 2018. Brink later transferred to Mountainside High School in Beaverton before attending Stanford.

Bradley W. Parks / OPB

The Portland Regional is the last chance that Brink will be able to play in front of her hometown fans for the foreseeable future. In November after working with a potential ownership group, the WNBA shelved plans for an expansion team in the city . Portland previously had a WNBA team from 2000-02 but the franchise folded.

However, the WNBA is launching a team in the San Francisco Bay Area set to start play in 2025.

“I really think that Portland deserves a franchise here. I think people would really rally behind a team here and they would support us,” Brink said. “Obviously the Bay is a good second for me, because at Stanford we’re close by. Hopefully one day. I think the way people are supporting women’s basketball now as a whole, there’s only more room for expansion.”

OPB’s First Look newsletter

Related stories.

NCAA women’s tournament return to Portland could bring the city an economic boost

This weekend Portland is hosting part of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament at the Moda Center. It’s just the second time some of the nation’s top teams have traveled to the city for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8. But this year’s tournament is expected to have a much greater impact on the local economy.

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Political Economics Requirements

I. preparation.

Admitted students are assumed to have some significant background in economics and/or political science. In addition, all students are required to have, or to obtain in the first year, skill in the use of the following mathematical methods:

Students are expected to have adequate computer programming skills. Knowledge of a computer language such as Fortran, C, or APL is sufficient. If students do not have adequate computer programming skills, they may learn this material on their own or take Stanford Computer Science course CS 106A: Programming Methodology by the summer following the first academic year, at the latest.

II. Course Requirements

All required courses must be taken for a grade (not pass/fail or credit/no credit). Exceptions are made if the required course is offered pass/fail or credit/no credit only. Each course must be passed with a grade of P or B- or better. Substitutions of required courses require approval from the faculty liaison. Waiving a course requirement based on similar doctoral level course completed elsewhere requires the approval of the course instructor, faculty liaison, and the PhD Program Office.

III. Practicum

PE students are required to attend PE seminars and the PE student research lunch, and sign up for either a research or teaching practicum every quarter of enrollment.

For the first year, the research practicum involves attending the Political Economy seminar and the PE student research lunch. For years two to five, the research practicum involves a research appointment with a faculty supervisor in addition to attending the Political Economy seminar and the PE student research lunch. Students will be assigned to a faculty member each quarter. The research practicum allows the students the opportunity to interact regularly with faculty and foster their professional development. A minimum of one quarter of teaching practicum (or course assistantship) is required during the student’s time in the program. The teaching practicum involves course preparation work with a faculty member in addition to attending the Political Economy seminar.

IV. Summer Research Papers

Each student is required to write a research paper each summer following the first and second year of study, and to present these papers to the faculty in an hour-long seminar during the autumn quarter of the second and third years, respectively. Successful completion of both papers is required for admission to candidacy.

V. Field Exam

Students are required to pass a field exam consisting of three parts:

• Political economy (covering material in POLECON 680, 681, 682)
• Microeconomics (covering material in the core microeconomic sequence)
• Econometrics (covering material in the core econometrics sequence)

Students take the field exam during the summer after their first year. In rare cases students may petition the faculty to defer taking the field exam to the summer after the second year. Per Stanford GSB policy, students who fail the exam are not guaranteed an opportunity to re-take the exam. At the faculty’s discretion, a student who fails the exam may be permitted to re-take the exam.

VI. Teaching Requirement

One quarter of course assistantship or teaching practicum. Requirement must be completed prior to graduation.

VII. Candidacy

Admission to candidacy for the doctoral degree is a judgment by the faculty of the student’s potential to successfully complete the requirements of the degree program. The procedure for making this assessment centers on a presentation by the student to his or her primary advisor and two other faculty members who are likely to become committee members. Students are expected to convene this meeting in the Spring of the third year. Students are required to advance to candidacy by September 1 before the start of their fourth year in the program.

VIII. University Oral Exam

The oral examination is a defense of the dissertation work in progress. The student orally presents and defends the thesis work in progress at a stage when it is one-half to two-thirds complete. The oral examination committee tests the student on the theory and methodology underlying the research, the areas of application and portions of the major field to which the research is relevant, and the significance of the dissertation research. Students are expected to complete the oral exam by the end of winter quarter of the fourth year and are required to successfully complete the oral exam by September 1 before the start of their fifth year in the program.

IX. Dissertation

The doctoral dissertation is an original contribution to scholarship or scientific knowledge, to exemplify the highest standards of the discipline, and to be of lasting value to the intellectual community. This generally involves the completion of three articles, although the specific format of the dissertation should be discussed between the student and his/her advisors. A maximum of one article can be co-authored with a faculty member. A minimum of one article must be solo-authored.

Typical Timeline

Years one & two.

• Field Requirements
• Directed Reading & Research
• Advancement to Candidacy
• Formulation of Research Topic
• Annual Evaluation
• Continued Research

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When cultural norms conflict in college advising.

For many college students, academic advising is about more than navigating course requirements. It can be a critical connection to campus resources and help cultivate a sense of belonging, especially for international, immigrant, and first-generation students. 

But institutional norms sometimes conflict with students’ expectations and ways of being — a “cultural mismatch” that can thwart the relationship between student and advisor, impeding students’ access to support and resources for academic success.

In a recent study , Emily Schell, a doctoral candidate at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), investigated the role of culturally mismatched advising in higher education, identifying areas of possible conflict between institutional norms and students’ expectations. Through interviews with 41 Chinese American and Chinese international students and 33 of their academic advisors at four U.S. public and private universities, Schell found that cultural mismatches can occur on several fronts, such as the level of student voice and self-advocacy expected in advising, the value advisors and students placed on exploration, and the emphasis on “passion” to motivate academic decisions. 

In a subsequent study, which Schell will present at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association on April 13, she analyzed student journals, interviews, and academic transcripts to explore the role of culturally responsive advising in 20 Chinese diaspora students’ first-year college experience. 

From both studies, Schell identified advising behaviors that can create cultural mismatches for some students — as well as subtle tweaks that can better support a sense of belonging and well-being, especially for international and immigrant students, alleviating some of the need for institutions to develop separate programs to address these concerns. 

“Cultural mismatches are often unintentional and hiding in plain sight, because European American norms are so deeply embedded in the structure and functioning of much of U.S. higher education,” she said. “By surfacing some of these mismatches and making some simple modifications, we can do more to support our students during their first year transition and journeys through college.”

Emily Schell

Shifting assumptions

Schell, whose dissertation focuses on culturally responsive advising to support international  and immigrant students, said her interest was ignited by her own background in East Asian studies and experience teaching elementary schoolers in China and Taiwan. 

“I would ask my students what made them choose a particular extracurricular activity, and they would say, ‘My mom or dad wanted me to,’ or ‘My teacher recommended it,’ or ‘Because I’m good at it,’ ” said Schell. “I’d ask, ‘Do you like it?’ And they’d say, ‘That’s a weird question.’ ” 

As a teacher, she realized she had to shift her assumptions about the role of enjoyment or passion in her students’ pursuits in order to affirm and support what actually motivated them. “I was able to be nimble enough to do that, but what about institutions?” she said. “I thought particularly about higher education and what would happen if some of my students went on to U.S. institutions.”

Students from China make up the largest proportion of international students at four-year colleges in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department, and the plurality of Asian American students are Chinese . Despite the “model minority” stereotype of Asian American students achieving high levels of academic success, Schell pointed to research indicating that Chinese diaspora students experience significant challenges navigating U.S. colleges, including xenophobia and linguistic barriers. 

“Even if the students [in my research] are academically successful, many of them would say that they're not thriving yet,” she said. “They're struggling to build domestic friendships or they don't have an adult who’s in their corner, who sees and knows them. They might be moving through, getting great grades, but they're not really able to engage with the experience.”

What culturally mismatched advising looks like 

Academic advisors are in a unique position to support students’ experiences, Schell said, but her research identified potential cultural mismatches on several fronts that could impact the advising relationship. For example, in addition to the role of “passion” in motivation, she found differences in the expectations of student voice: Advisors tended to expect students to lead advising conversations, which was daunting for some of the students Schell studied.

Another mismatch involved expectations of exploration, which Schell attributed partly to different cultural perceptions of students during this period of “ emerging adulthood .” In a Chinese cultural context, 18- to 24-year-olds are often viewed (and see themselves) as adults whose undergraduate experience is predominantly intended for career preparation. But advisors, and U.S. higher education more broadly , tends to encourage students to use these years to explore a range of paths. 

Schell also observed differences in the need for socioemotional support students sought from their advisors. For instance, in response to a question asking students to rank forms of support — including academic, career, social/cultural, and emotional — from most to least important, 73 percent of Chinese international students listed emotional or social/cultural support among their top two, compared with 53 percent of Chinese American and 36 percent of their European American peers.

Although advisors who shared a racial or ethnic background with students sometimes found it easier to connect to their Chinese diaspora students’ experiences, Schell found that some advisors across racial groups were able to successfully provide culturally responsive advising. In fact, some Chinese international interviewees expressed a preference for having an advisor from a different racial or ethnic background, as they came to study in the United States for exposure to different cultural perspectives. 

Cultural mismatches in advising had consequences, Schell found. Some students reported disengaging from their advising relationships, turning instead to other sources such as professors or peers, who aren’t necessarily familiar with a wide range of campus resources — or, more concerningly, to no one at all. In interviews and journal entries, many indicated lower expectations of support from their advisors and lower satisfaction with their broader experience of support at their university.

Making knowledge gaps visible

Schell’s research surfaced advising behaviors that could address mismatched norms and expectations, meeting students where they are and taking it from there.

Advisors could take a few minutes to have an expectation-setting conversation at the beginning of the advising relationship, she said, to iron out questions that both sides have: Students might be unclear about an advisor’s role or the types of questions they can ask, or an advisor may not realize their student isn’t used to having a choice of courses and might not know how to navigate a course catalog. 

“It’s all about that first conversation,” said Schell, “making potential knowledge gaps visible.” 

One simple approach, she said, was for advisors to open with a menu of options for discussion, so that a student who isn’t clear about the type of questions the advisor can address can still shape the direction of the conversation. “It’s just a small tweak: Instead of ‘What do you want to talk about today,’ saying ‘Here are some of the things we could talk about.’ ”

Some students in Schell’s research who experienced culturally matched advising reported greater connections to campus resources and programs, such as one Chinese American student who credited his advisor with helping him access an opportunity to conduct medical research as a first-year undergrad. Recognizing that advisors might not be able to provide guidance on all of the extracurricular programs available at their institution, Schell said that communicating the boundaries of their advising role clearly and being prepared to refer students to people who can offer support in other areas was a more manageable way to ensure more holistic advising. 

While her research focused on Chinese American and international students, these advising strategies apply broadly, Schell said. 

“There’s a lot of conversation in higher ed, understandably, around issues with belonging for many different student groups, including international and first-generation students,” said Schell. “Institutions are investing a lot of money in new programs to address this, but here’s a powerful resource we already have that we can maximize to better support all of our students.”

Emily Schell’s research was supported by a research grant from NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising .

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The 2024 Economic Report of the   President

Today, the Council of Economic Advisers under the leadership of Chair Jared Bernstein released the 2024 Economic Report of the President , the 78 th report since the establishment of CEA in 1946. The 2024 Report brings economic evidence and data to bear on many of today’s most significant issues and questions in domestic and international economic policy:

Chapter 1, The Benefits of Full Employment , which is dedicated to the late Dr. William Spriggs, examines the labor market, distributional, and macroeconomic impacts of full employment, with a particular focus on the benefits for economically vulnerable groups of workers who are much more likely to be left behind in periods of weak labor markets.

Chapter 2, The Year in Review and the Years Ahead , describes macroeconomic and financial market trends in 2023 and presents the Federal government’s FY 2024 macroeconomic forecast.

Chapter 3, Population, Aging, and the Economy , explains how long-run trends in fertility and mortality are shaping the U.S. population and labor force.

Chapter 4, Increasing the Supply of Affordable Housing, explores the causes and consequences of the nation’s longstanding housing shortage and how the Biden-Harris administration’s policy agenda can significantly increase the production of more affordable housing.

Chapter 5, International Trade and Investment Flows, presents key facts about long-term trends in U.S. international trade and investment flows, including the role of global supply chains, and highlights the benefits and costs of global integration for American workers.

Chapter 6, Accelerating the Clean Energy Transition , applies a structural change framework to explain the factors that can accelerate the transition towards a clean energy economy.

Chapter 7, An Economic Framework for Understanding Artificial Intelligence , uses an economic framework to explore when, how, and why AI may be adopted, adapting standard economic models to explore AI’s potential effects on labor markets, while examining policy decisions that will affect social and macroeconomic outcomes.

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