Kosali Simon to Direct Program on the Economics of Aging

Research Associate Kosali Simon, the Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor and Distinguished Professor at the Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, will become director of the NBER Program on the Economics of Aging at the start of the 2026–27 academic year. She succeeds Jonathan Skinner of Dartmouth College, who has directed the program since 2016, when David Wise of the Harvard Kennedy School, the program’s founding director, stepped down. 

Simon, an NBER affiliate since 2002, has been an important contributor to the Economics of Aging Program, serving on the program's steering committee and co-organizing Summer Institute meetings. Along with Katherine Baicker of the University of Chicago, she is the co-PI of a major NIH grant that studies healthcare decision-making and outcomes for patients with Alzheimer's disease.  

Simon’s research has advanced our understanding of how public and private health insurance affect healthcare outcomes, as well as how vaccines and other policy responses affected mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides the Economics of Aging, she is affiliated with the Children and Families and Economics of Health programs, and is president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.