Amy Finkelstein

The idea that debates in health care economics can be settled using randomized control trials and large-scale data grows less controversial every year, thanks to Finkelstein’s prolific work. In 2022 alone, papers authored or co-authored by the former MacArthur award winner showed that conservatives’ fears that expanding state Medicaid coverage for adults would bring burdensome numbers of child applicants out of the woodwork were unjustified; that rates of opioid addiction could best be lowered by policies targeting regional variations in doctors’ willingness to prescribe the drugs; and that an American’s risk of dying during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic depended less on where they lived than on their racial or ethnic group, whether they were college-educated, and whether they worked in a service industry.