BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Sean Nicholson is an associate professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management (PAM) at Cornell University and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is currently conducting research in four areas: the value of new medical technology; the extent and benefits of physician specialization; measuring the financial benefit to an employer of investing in the health of its workers; and the causes of autism. Specific research projects include: estimating quality-adjusted price indexes for colon, lung, and breast cancer drugs in the United States and Europe; examining whether physicians’ treatment decisions are influenced by where they train and how their peers treat patients; the welfare effects of variation in physician treatment styles; and measuring the cost to employers of absences and on-the-job productivity losses due to poor health.
Prior to joining the PAM Department in 2004, Dr. Nicholson was a faculty member in the Health Care Systems Department at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Sean worked for four years as a management consultant with APM and taught high school for two years before enrolling in graduate school. He received a BA from Dartmouth College in 1986 and a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997.