Profile of Amy N. Finkelstein

Abstract

“It is a very exciting time to be an economist,” says Amy Finkelstein, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. “Economics has become a rigorous science, combining theory and data to better understand how the world works and how to improve it.” Focusing on the healthcare sector in the United States, Finkelstein integrates economic models, empirical methods, and data to find solutions for problems facing health insurance markets and healthcare delivery systems. Her research carries implications for healthcare policy. Finkelstein’s Inaugural Article (1) reports that a nationwide Medicare reform influenced the treatment of patients who were covered by other kinds of health insurance. The findings suggest that such broad effects should be taken into account when formulating future healthcare policies. Amy Finkelstein. Image credit: MacArthur Foundation. Finkelstein was born in New York City in 1973 to biologist parents, who both earned doctorates at The Rockefeller University. In 1940, her mother immigrated to the United States from Poland, where her maternal grandmother had received a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Warsaw. Finkelstein says, “It is remarkable that a Jewish woman in the 1920s was able to earn a doctorate in Eastern Europe.” The Finkelstein family papers documenting their lives are archived at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Finkelstein was greatly influenced by her parents and shares their passion for research and academia. She attended the prestigious Brearley School in New York City before majoring in government at Harvard College. Finkelstein says, “I gravitated to government and political science as a way of trying to make sense of history, but I increasingly found myself drawn to quantitative and empirical work within that field.” During her senior year at Harvard, Finkelstein took …