Rate My Professor Colleen Carey

Colleen Carey is an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Cornell University. She joined the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, now part of the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, in 2015. An economist by training, her research focuses on the industrial organization of health care, with special attention to federal regulation of health insurance markets. This includes the design of publicly subsidized health insurance markets such as the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and the effectiveness of regulations like reinsurance and risk adjustment in addressing adverse selection. Additional research examines financial relationships between physicians and drug firms influencing prescribing behavior, state prescription drug monitoring programs aimed at curbing opioid abuse, and health outcomes for Social Security Disability Insurance recipients. She holds a BA from Yale University and a PhD in Economics from Johns Hopkins University in 2013.

Prior to Cornell, Carey was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan, a Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers from 2011 to 2012, and a visiting researcher at Princeton University’s Center for Health and Wellbeing. She is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and currently serves as a Fellow at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 2024-2025. Carey serves on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Health Economics. Her publications appear in top journals including the Review of Economics and Statistics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics, and Health Affairs. Key works include “Why Does Disability Increase During Recessions? Evidence from Medicare” (forthcoming, Review of Economics and Statistics, with Nolan H. Miller and David Molitor, 2022 NBER working paper), “The Impact of Provider Reimbursement on Health Care Utilization of Low-Income Individuals: Evidence from Medicare and Medicaid” (2025, AEJ: Economic Policy, with Marika Cabral and Sarah Miller), “Technological Change and Risk Adjustment: Benefit Design Incentives in Medicare Part D” (2017, AEJ: Economic Policy), and “Drug Firms’ Payments and Physicians’ Prescribing Behavior in Medicare Part D” (2021, Journal of Public Economics, with Ethan M. J. Lieber and Sarah M. Miller). She has been a finalist for the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation’s Health Care Research Awards for three papers.