Amanda Kowalski is an American health economist serving as the Gail Wilensky Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Michigan.[1][2] She is an elected member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association,[3] and a research associate at the health, public economics, and aging programs of the National Bureau of Economic Research.[1] Kowalski's research focuses on health policy, in particular on the targeting of treatments and health insurance expansions to those that need them most.[1] She is the winner of the 2019 ASHEcon medal, awarded by the American Society of Health Economists to the best researcher under the age of 40.[4]
In addition to her academic appointments, Kowalski is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She was elected to the 2024 executive committee of the American Economic Association,[3] and sits on the board of directors of the American Society of Health Economists.[6]
Several of Kowalski's early works examined the health effects of the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform. In a paper with Jonathan Kolstad,[7] Kowalski shows that the reform increased the insured population of Massachusetts, with no corresponding increase in the growth rate in hospital costs.[8] This is because of decreases in average length of stay and the number of emergency department admissions.[8]
In a recent paper,[9] Kowalski also addresses discrepancies in estimated effects of the Massachusetts health care reform and Oregon Medicaid health experiment on emergency department visits. She shows that beneficiaries of the Massachusetts health care reform were healthier than their counterparts who received health insurance in Oregon, and that differences in group composition can explain divergent effects on emergency department visitation.[10]
Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion
Kowalski has also pursued research on the effects of Medicaid expansion. In a paper with David Brown and Ithai Lurrie,[11] Kowalski shows that expansions to Medicaid in the 1980s and 1990s increased covered children's earnings, increasing tax receipts and decreasing earned income tax credit claims. They find that these effects allowed the government to recoup 56 cents on every dollar of Medicaid spending.[12][13][14]
In an article in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity,[15] Kowalski shows that the ACA Medicaid expansions caused welfare losses, with results driven by states that experienced technical glitches[16] or ceded ACA enforcement to the federal government.[17]
Awards and honors
She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award,[18] and won the 2019 ASHEcon medal, awarded by the American Society of Health Economists to the best health economist under the age of 40.[4]
