Featured Researcher: Mireille Jacobson
Mireille Jacobson is a research associate in the NBER’s Health Care Program. She is an associate professor of economics at the University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She codirects the Aging and Cognition Program at the university’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics.
Jacobson’s research considers the effects of health policy on decision-making and health outcomes. Her work has assessed the impact of Medicare reimbursement policy on chemotherapy treatment patterns, the role of annual wellness visits in identifying cognitive impairment among Medicare beneficiaries, and the effect of medical marijuana laws on opioid use. Recent work includes several randomized controlled experiments, including one that studies the impact of public health messaging and financial incentives on COVID-19 vaccination rates and another that evaluates the role of price and information in the purchase of naloxone, a potentially lifesaving opioid overdose reversal drug.
Jacobson’s work has been supported by numerous agencies and foundations, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the National Institute on Aging, J-PAL North America, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She serves on AHRQ’s National Advisory Council and is a standing member of the National Institutes of Health’s study section on the Organization and Delivery of Health Services. Jacobson is a coeditor of the American Journal of Health Economics, an associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics, and serves on the editorial boards of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and the International Journal of Health Economics and Management.
Jacobson earned a BA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from Harvard University. She was a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of Michigan. She previously served on the faculty at the University of California, Irvine, and as a senior economist at the RAND Corporation.
Jacobson lives in Culver City with her husband, who is also on the faculty at USC, and their two children. She also has a dog and a cat, the self-appointed head of household. In her spare time, she enjoys cycling to the beach with her family and going to the gym with the hope of one day doing an overhand pull-up.
