Mark Shepard

Mark Shepard is an assistant professor at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research studies health care markets, with topics at the intersection of health, industrial organization, and public economics. Much of his work focuses on competition and policy design in health insurance markets, particularly in public programs like the Massachusetts/ACA health insurance exchanges and Medicaid managed care. Mark received his PhD in economics from Harvard University (2015) and his A.B. in applied math from Harvard (2008). He was a Post-doctoral Fellow (in Aging and Health Economics) at the NBER during the 2015-16 academic year before starting as an assistant professor in 2016-17. Before graduate school, Mark spent a year working at the Brookings Institution's Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform (2008-09).

Academic Journal/Scholarly Articles

• McIntyre, Adrianna, Mark Shepard, and Myles Wagner. "Can Automatic Retention Improve Health Insurance Market Outcomes?" AEA Papers and Proceedings 111 (May 2021): 560-566.

HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series

• Kreider, Amanda R., Timothy J. Layton, Mark Shepard and Jacob Wallace. "Adverse Selection and Network Design Under Regulated Plan Prices: Evidence from Medicaid." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP22-025, December 2022.
• Pakes, Ariel, Jack Porter, Mark Shepard, and Sophie Calder-Wang. "Unobserved Heterogeneity, State Dependence, and Health Plan Choices." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP21-020, July 2021.
• McIntyre, Adrianna, Mark Shepard, and Myles Wagner. "Can Automatic Retention Improve Health Insurance Market Outcomes?" HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP21-012, April 2021.

Research Papers/Reports

• Shepard, Mark, and Ethan Forsgren. "Do Insurers Respond to Active Purchasing? Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange." October 15, 2021.