Darius Lakdawalla is the Director of Research at the Leonard Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California, where he holds a tenured Associate Professorship in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development. Formerly, he served as the Director of Research at the Bing Center for Health Economics, at the RAND Corporation.
Dr. Lakdawalla studies the economics of innovation, the dynamics of infectious disease, the economics of obesity, and insurance markets. Dr. Lakdawalla received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and his Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics and Philosophy (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Amherst College. His work has been published in leading journals of economics, medicine, and health policy, and has been featured in BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Investor's Business Daily, and other major news outlets.
He is a regular recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He is currently a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, MA, and is a Professor of Economics at the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy.
