Leemore Dafny
Leemore S. Dafny

MANAGEMENT & STRATEGY; HEALTH ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT
Associate Professor of Management & Strategy
Herman Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services

Print Overview

Leemore Dafny is an Associate Professor of Management and Strategy.  Dafny is an applied microeconomist whose research focuses on competition in healthcare markets and the impact of public interventions on healthcare costs and quality.  Recent projects include "Are Private Health Insurance Markets Competitive?" and "Estimation and Identification of Merger Effects: An Application to Hospital Mergers." 

Dafny graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company prior to earning her PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research and the Center for the Study of Industrial Organization at Northwestern University.  She has lectured to a variety of audiences, and has served as a consulting expert on antitrust issues in healthcare, and healthcare policy reform.



Areas of Expertise
Competition in Healthcare
Competitive Analysis
Healthcare Management
Print Vita
Education
PhD, 2001, Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
AB, 1995, Economics, Harvard University, Summa Cum Laude

Grants and Awards
Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award, 2012
Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award, Kellogg School of Management, 2012
Leemore S. Dafny 
Are Health Insurance Markets Competitive?
American Economic Review, 2012, 100(4): 1399-1431.
[Read the Q&A and hear the podcast] [Read the Kellogg Insight article]
Faculty Impact Award- Empirical Methods In Strategy, 2010
Faculty Impact Award- Healthcare Strategy, 2011

 
Print Research
Research Interests
Industrial organization, competition in healthcare markets, anticompetitive conduct, merger analysis, healthcare reform, public health insurance programs

Articles
Dafny, Leemore S., Katherine Ho and Mauricio Varela. Forthcoming. Let them Have Choice: Gains from Shifting away from Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance and Toward an Individual Exchange. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.
Abstract
Dafny, Leemore S., Ronen Avraham and Max Schanzenbach. Forthcoming. The Impact of Tort Reform on Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Premiums. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations.
AbstractRead
Dafny, Leemore S., Mark Duggan and Subramaniam Ramanarayanan. 2012. Paying a Premium on Your Premium? Consolidation in the U.S. Health Insurance Industry. American Economic Review.
AbstractRead
Dafny, Leemore S. and David Cutler. 2011. Designing Transparency Systems for Medical Care Prices. New England Journal of Medicine.
Read
Dafny, Leemore S., David Dranove, Frank Limbrock and Fiona Scott Morton. 2011. Data Impediments to Empirical Work on Health Insurance Markets. B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. 11(2): Article 8.
AbstractLink
Dafny, Leemore S., Katherine Ho and Mauricio Varela. 2010. An Individual Healthplan Exchange: Which Employees Would Benefit and Why?. American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings. 100: 485-489.
Read
Dafny, Leemore S.. 2010. Are Health Insurance Markets Competitive?. American Economic Review. 100(4): 1399-1431.
AbstractRead
Dranove, David, Cory Capps and Leemore S. Dafny. 2010. A Competitive Process for Procuring Health Services: A Review of Principles with an Application to Cataract Services. SPP Research Paper: The Health Series. The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary 2(5)
Abstract
Dafny, Leemore S.. 2009. Estimation and Identification of Merger Effects: An Application to Hospital Mergers. Journal of Law and Economics. 52(3): 523-550.
AbstractRead
Dafny, Leemore S. and David Dranove. 2009. Regulatory Exploitation and Management Changes: Upcoding in the Hospital Industry. Journal of Law and Economics. 52(2): 223-250.
AbstractLink
Dafny, Leemore S. and David Dranove. 2008. Do Report Cards Tell Consumers Anything They Don't Already Know? The Case of Medicare HMOs. RAND Journal of Economics. 39(3): 790-821.
AbstractLink
Dafny, Leemore S.. 2005. How Do Hospitals Respond to Price Changes?. American Economic Review. 95(5): 1525-1547.
AbstractLink
Dafny, Leemore S.. 2005. Games Hospitals Play: Entry Deterrence in Hospital Procedure Markets. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy. 14(3): 513-542.
AbstractLink
Dafny, Leemore S. and Jonathan Gruber. 2005. Public Insurance and Child Hospitalizations: Access and Efficiency Effects. Journal of Public Economics. 89(1): 109-129.
AbstractLink
Working Papers
Dafny, Leemore S. and Subramaniam Ramanarayanan. Does it Matter if Your Health Insurer is For-Profit? Effects of Ownership on Premiums, Medical Spending, and Insurance Coverage.
Dafny, Leemore S., David Cutler and Christopher Ody. How Does Competition Impact Quality of Care? A Case Study of the U.S. Dialysis Industry.

 
Print Teaching
Teaching Interests
Empirical methods in strategy
Full-Time / Part-Time MBA
Empirical Methods in Strategy (MGMT-469-0)

This course counts toward the following majors: Decision Sciences, Health Enterprise Management, Health Industry Management, Managerial Analytics, Management & Strategy.

To develop and implement a business strategy, managers must make sense of massive amounts of information. Most managers (and the consultants they hire) can compute the means and standard deviations of individual variables, but few are adequately prepared to identify the relationships among variables or to interpret those relationships in the context of the underlying managerial issues. This "clinical" course provides that preparation. Through the development of rigorous statistical analysis skills linked to theoretical issues in management and strategy, students learn how to draw inference from data about real-world strategic issues. The instructor provides real-world data and offer close supervision as students design and execute their own analyses and prepare reports on their findings. Using sophisticated statistical software, students may estimate demand curves, identify opportunities for entry in growing markets, assess compatibility issues in high tech markets and perform benchmarking analyses. Students also read and discuss academic studies in management and strategy to identify best analytic practices.

Healthcare Strategy (MGMT-945-0)

This course counts toward the following majors: Management and Strategy, Health Enterprise Management

This new course delves into the strategic issues faced by healthcare firms. We will use concepts from the core strategy course (MGMT-431) as an organizing framework, and discuss where and why the healthcare sector deviates from the norm. For example, what is the role of competitive positioning when quality is so difficult to measure? How can you remain profitable if you compete against not-for-profits who don’t face taxes? Because a great deal of healthcare strategy relies on understanding the nitty-gritty of particular industries, we will spend time learning about several of these, including health insurance, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. Although our focus is on private firms in the U.S., we will (of necessity) be discussing the role of the government in regulating and providing healthcare, and (time permitting) discuss some international issues. This is a lecture and case-based discussion course with group projects and a final exam

Executive MBA
U.S. Healthcare Strategy (MGMTX-945-0)