Amy Nadya Finkelstein (born November 2, 1973) is an American economist who is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the co-director and research associate of the Public Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the co-Scientific Director of J-PAL North America.[2]
Finkelstein was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows for three years, after which she joined the MIT faculty in 2005[10] and received tenure within three years.[8]
In 2016, MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences named Finkelstein the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor for a five-year term.[11] The professorship was established with a gift by Edmund MacDonald, and recognizes Finkelstein's outstanding achievements in the field of economics.[11]
Research
Finkelstein's primary expertise is in public finance and health economics, focusing particularly on health insurance.[8] She conducts research into market failures and government intervention in insurance markets, and the impact of public policy on health care and health insurance.[12] Together with Katherine Baicker, she is one of two principal investigators of the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a randomized evaluation of the impact of expanding Medicaid to low-income adults.[13] Her research has shown that newly enrolled Medicaid patients make more trips overall to providers after acquiring insurance, make more visits to emergency rooms, and benefit financially from having insurance, among other findings.[14] Finkelstein said that the body of research, including her work on the effects of the 2008 Medicaid expansion in Oregon, have made her confident that health insurance improves health.[15]
Finkelstein is Jewish. She was born in New York City in 1973 to biologist parents, who both earned doctorates at The Rockefeller University. In 1940, her mother immigrated to the United States from Poland, where her maternal grandmother had received a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Warsaw. [18]
Finkelstein, Amy N.; Taubman, Sarah L.; Allen, Heidi L.; Wright, Bill J.; Baicker, Katherine (2016). "Effect of Medicaid Coverage on ED Use โ Further Evidence from Oregon's Experiment". New England Journal of Medicine. 375 (16): 1505โ1507. doi:10.1056/nejmp1609533. hdl:1721.1/114043. PMID27797307. S2CID30226905.
^"CSWEP Awards and Prizes". Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. Archived from the original on 2012-03-15. Retrieved 28 April 2012.