Katherine Baicker

Katherine Baicker, PhD, is C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an elected member of the Institute of Medicine.

Professor Baicker serves as a Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission; as Chair of the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission; on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers; as a Director of Eli Lilly; on the Editorial Boards of Health Affairs, the Journal of Health Economics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives; and as past Chair of the Board of Directors of AcademyHealth. From 2005-2007, she served as a Senate-confirmed Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, where she played a leading role in the development of health policy.

Professor Baicker’s research focuses primarily on the factors that drive the distribution, generosity, and effectiveness of public and private health insurance, with a particular focus on health insurance finance and the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of care. Her research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Health Affairs, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio. She is currently one of the leaders of a research program investigating the many effects of expanding health insurance coverage in the context of a randomized Medicaid expansion in Oregon.