Keith Ericson

Keith M. Marzilli Ericson is a Professor of Markets, Public Policy, and Law at the Boston University Questrom School of Business, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and the American Journal of Health Economics. He is also the Faculty Director of the Undergraduate Business Analytics Program at the Questrom School of Business. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Professor Ericson’s research has examined healthcare markets, examining how regulation interacts with imperfect competition and individual decision making. His research includes work on how insurance delivers value to individuals and how individual make decisions in insurance markets. Recent work examines coordination of healthcare, teams, and the role of organizational boundaries.

Professor Ericson has also explored the foundations of economic decision making (behavioral economics), including work on the role of limited memory, the endowment effect and expectations about the future, intertemporal choice, and the effect of privacy on truthful disclosure of sexual orientation.

His work has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Journal of the European Economic Association, Inquiry, and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, among others. Various media outlets have featured his research, including Harvard Business Review, Slate, The Atlantic, Freakonomics Radio, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Education

• Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University, 2011
• A.M., Economics, Harvard University, 2008
• B.A., Economics and Political Science, Williams College, summa cum laude, 2004

Current Positions

• 2023-Present Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University Questrom School of Business
• 2020-Present Faculty Director of Undergraduate Business Analytics, Boston University Questrom School of Business
• 2018-Present Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research

Previous Positions

• 2017-2023 Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University Questrom School of Business
• 2012-2018 Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research
• 2011-2017 Assistant Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University Questrom School of Business
• 2015 Visiting Scholar, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College

Selected Publications

• Lubin, B., Geissler, K., Ericson, K. (In Press). "The Association of Insurance Plan Characteristics with Physician Patient-Sharing Network Structure", International Journal of Health Economics and Management
• Geissler, K., Ericson, K., Simon, G., Qian, J., Zeber, J. (2023). "Differences in Insurance Coverage for Individuals With Schizophrenia After Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", JAMA Psychiatry
• Craig, S., Ericson, K., Starc, A. (2021). "How Important is Price Variation between Health Insurers?", Journal of Health Economics
• Geissler, K., Lubin, B., Ericson, K. (2020). "The Role of Organizational Affiliations in Physician Patient-Sharing Relationships.", Med Care Res Rev, 77 (2), 165-175
• Dorison, C., Wang, K., Rees, V., Kawachi, I., Ericson, K., Lerner, J. (2020). "Sadness, but not all negative emotions, heightens addictive substance use.", Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 117 (2), 943-949
• Ericson, K., Geissler, K., Lubin, B. (2018). "The Impact of Partial-Year Enrollment on the Accuracy of Risk-Adjustment Systems: A Framework and Evidence", American Journal of Health Economics, 4 (4), 454-478
• Ericson, K., Sydnor, J. (2017). "The Questionable Value of Having a Choice of Levels of Health Insurance Coverage", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (4), 51-72
• Loewenstein, G., Hagmann, D., Schwartz, J., Ericson, K., Kessler, J., Bhargava, S., Blumenthal-Barby, J., D'Aunno, T., Handel, B., Kolstad, J., Nussbaum, D., Shaffer, V., Skinner, J., Ubel, P., Zikmund-Fisher, B. (2017). "A behavioral blueprint for improving health care policy", Behavioral Science & Policy, 3 (1), 52-66
• Ericson, K. (2017). "On the Interaction of Memory and Procrastination: Implications for Reminders, Deadlines, and Empirical Estimation", Journal of the European Economic Association, 15 (3), 692-719
• Ericson, K., Kingsdale, J., Layton, T., Sacarny, A. (2017). "Nudging Leads Consumers In Colorado To Shop But Not Switch ACA Marketplace Plans", Health Affairs, 36 (2), 311-319
• Ericson, K., Starc, A. (2016). "How product standardization affects choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange.", J Health Econ, 50 71-85
• Ericson, K., Kessler, J. (2016). "The articulation of government policy: Health insurance mandates versus taxes", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 124 43-54
• Geissler, K., Lubin, B., Ericson, K. (2016). "Access is not Enough: Characteristics of Physicians Who Treat Medicaid Patients", Medical Care, 55 350-358
• Ericson, K., Starc, A. (2015). "Pricing Regulation and Imperfect Competition on the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange", Review of Economics and Statistics, 97 (3), 667-682
• Ericson, K., White, J., Laibson, D., Cohen, J. (2015). "Money earlier or later? Simple heuristics explain intertemporal choices better than delay discounting does.", Psychol Sci, 26 (6), 826-833
• Ericson, K., Starc, A. (2015). "Measuring Consumer Valuation of Limited Provider Networks", American Economic Review, 105 (5), 115-119
• Marzilli Ericson, K., Fuster, A. (2014). "The Endowment Effect", Annual Review of Economics, 6 (1), 555-579
• Ericson, K. (2014). "Consumer Inertia and Firm Pricing in the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Insurance Exchange", American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6 (1), 38-64
• Ericson, K., Stare, A. (2012). "Designing and Regulating Health Insurance Exchanges: Lessons from Massachusetts", INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing, 49 (4), 327-338
• Ericson, K., Starc, A. (2012). "Heuristics and Heterogeneity in Health Insurance Exchanges: Evidence from the Massachusetts Connector", American Economic Review, 102 (3), 493-497
• Marzilli Ericson, K., Fuster, A. (2011). "Expectations as Endowments: Evidence on Reference-Dependent Preferences from Exchange and Valuation Experiments *", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126 (4), 1879-1907
• Ericson, K. (2011). "Forgetting We Forget: Overconfidence And Memory", Journal of the European Economic Association, 9 (1), 43-60
• Cutler, D., Ericson, K. (2010). "Cost-effectiveness analysis in markets with high fixed costs.", Pharmacoeconomics, 28 (10), 867-875
• McClure, S., Ericson, K., Laibson, D., Loewenstein, G., Cohen, J. (2007). "Time discounting for primary rewards", Journal of Neuroscience, 27 (21), 5796-5804

Selected Research Presentations

• Ericson, K. The Impact of Organizational Boundaries on Healthcare Coordination and Utilization, Ohio State University, 2021
• Ericson, K. Dangerous Prescribing and Healthcare Fragmentation: Evidence from Opioids, Ohio State University, 2021
• Ericson, K. The Impact of Organizational Boundaries on Healthcare Coordination and Utilization, Simon Fraser University, 2021
• Ericson, K. The Impact of Organizational Boundaries on Healthcare Coordination and Utilization, Georgia State University, 2021
• Ericson, K. Discussion of "Abandoned Retirement Savings", Online Public Finance Seminar Series, 2021
• Ericson, K. Discussion of "Identifying Physician Practice Style for Mental Health Diagnoses", ASHEcon 2020, Online, 2020
• Ericson, K. Nudging Take-up of Subsidized Insurance: Evidence from Massachusetts, BU-Harvard-MIT Health Seminar, Online, 2020

Awards And Honors

• 2018, Noe Research Award, Boston University Questrom School of Business
• 2017, National Institute for Health Care Management Research Award, National Institute for Health Care Management
• 2015, Broderick Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research, Boston University Questrom School of Business