Amy Finkelstein
Visiting Fellow, Jan. 1-March 19, 2011
Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Amy Finkelstein’s research is in the areas of public finance and health economics. Her primary research interests are market failures and government intervention in insurance markets, and the impact of public policy on the health care sector. One notable study she conducted suggests that the widespread expansion of medical insurance over the last half century may have been responsible for a large share of the dramatic growth in health expenditures.
She joined the faculty at MIT in 2005 after three years as a junior fellow with the Harvard Society of Fellows. She is currently a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and codirector of NBER’s Public Economics Program. She is also a coeditor of the Journal of Public Economics.
In 2008 she won the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award as well as the Elaine Bennett Research Prize, given every other year to the most outstanding young female economist by the American Economic Association. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2009.
She received her master’s degree in economics from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar; she earned her doctorate in economics from MIT in 2001.