Donna B. Gilleskie

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Professor of Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research; and Director of the Demography and Economics of Aging Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

As a health economist, Professor Gilleskie studies the economics of individual health behavior. The approach reflected in her work involves understanding the dynamics of decisionmaking over time. Her work offers contributions in the following applied areas: the effect of health insurance characteristics on medical care utilization and health behaviors; the effect of health and health insurance on employment behavior and outcomes; and the effect of medical and non-medical choices on health and health behaviors.

Working Group

Health Inequality (HI)
Identity and Personality (IP)

Additional Information

Email: donna_gilleskie@unc.edu
Homepage: http://www.unc.edu/~dgill/

Research Interests:

Almost all of my current research projects are related to health (generally). These include: the effect of disability on occupational choice (in particular, work characteristics), employer and occupational tenure, and subsequent wages; the effects of endogenous peer selection and behaviors on adolescent health behaviors; the effect of information (from own health markers and health shocks as well as parents health shocks) on own smoking behavior over lifetime; and the effect of life-cycle decisions during the ages of 18-45 (e.g., marriage, kids, education, and employment) on body mass evolution and subsequent wages. Most recently I have begun work examining the role of personality in explaining economic concepts such as risk-aversion, time-preference, and subjective expectations, which are estimated through full solution of individual dynamic optimization problems with regard to health behaviors and health outcomes. All of my work utilizes longitudinal data on individuals and dynamic models.

Related Papers:

Blau, David and Donna Gilleskie. 2008
The Role of Retiree Health Insurance in the Employment Behavior of Older Men
International Economic Review 49(2): 475-514

Yang, Zhou, Donna Gilleskie, and Edward Norton 2009
Health Insurance, Medical Care, and Health Outcomes: A Model of Elderly Health Dynamics
Journal of Human Resources, 44(1): 47-114.