Featured Researcher: Amitabh Chandra
Amitabh Chandra is a Research Associate of the NBER's programs in aging, health care, children, education, and labor economics. Chandra is a Professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Dr. Chandra is a Co-Editor of the Journal of Human Resources, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the American Economic Journal: Applied, the Forum in Health Economics and Policy and Economic Letters. He is a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany.
Dr. Chandra is the winner of several research awards, including the Arrow Award for the Best Paper in Health Economics and the Garfield Award for Economic Impact on Medical Research, as well as the W.E. Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award. His research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His work has been published in journals including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy and the New England Journal of Medicine, and has been featured in media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and National Public Radio.
Professor Chandra holds a Ph.D. and B.A. in Economics from the University of Kentucky. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard, he taught at Dartmouth College. At the Kennedy School, he teaches courses in health economics and empirical methods.
Professor Chandra's research focuses on productivity and cost growth in health care, and on understanding the sources of racial disparities in health. In some of his recent work, he has examined whether higher patient cost-sharing leads to increased hospitalizations, the role of productivity spillovers in explaining geographic variation in medical care, and using economic insights to evaluate the case for provider prejudice in healthcare.
In his spare time, he enjoys any activity involving German cars and sailing with his coauthors, Jonathan Skinner and Doug Staiger.
