Sean Nicholson

Sean Nicholson

Sean is a professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management (PAM) at Cornell University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  Prior to joining the PAM Department in 2004, Sean 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 B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1986 and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997.

He is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Research Director of the Upstate Health Research Network, and an Associate Editor of the journal Health Economics. 

Sean is currently conducting research in three areas: the value of new medical technologies; the benefits of physician specialization; and the effect of financial incentives on physicians' treatment decisions.

PhD 1997 - University of Wisconsin-Madison, Economics
MS 1995 - University of Wisconsin-Madison, Economics
BA 1986 - Dartmouth College, Economics

PAM 2350, The US Health Care System

PAM 3110: Pharmaceutical Management and Policy

PAM 5630, Health Care Financial Management II

Advice for President Obama: An Economics Panel Discussion

Cornell economists offer reaction to the government's recent economic activity. This session was held on Feb. 19, 2009 at Kennedy Hall and was sponsored by the Institute for the Advancement of Economics at Cornell (IAEC).

Member of IAEC committee, 2010-2012.
Member of Sloan curriculum committee.

Member of the Sloan admissions committee.

Danzon, Patricia M., and Sean Nicholson, editors, 2012. The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of the Biopharmaceutical Industry.  Oxford University Press.

Nicholson, Sean, and Carol Propper, 2012, “Medical Workforce,” in Handbook of Health Economics, Volume 2, edited by Mark Pauly, Thomas McGuire, and Pedro Pito Barros.  Amsterdam: Elsevier, pages 873-925.

Morra, Dante, Sean Nicholson, Wendy Levinson, David N. Gans, Terry Hammons, and Larry P. Casalino, 2011, “US Physician Practices Spend Nearly Four Times as Much  Money Interacting with Health Plans and Payors Than Do Their Canadian Counterparts,”  Health Affairs 30(8): 1443-1450.

Epstein, Andrew J., Jonathan Ketcham, and Sean Nicholson, 2010, “Specialization and Matching in Professional Services Firms,” RAND Journal of Economics 41(4): 812-835. 

Epstein, Andrew J., and Sean Nicholson, 2009, “The Formation and Evolution of Physician Treatment Styles: An Application to Caesarean Sections,” Journal of Health Economics 28: 1126-1140. [paper] 

Asch, David A., Sean Nicholson, Sindhu Srinivas, Jeph Herrin, and Andrew J. Epstein, 2009, “Evaluating Obstetrical Residency Programs Using Patient Outcomes,” Journal of the American Medical Association 302(12): 1277-1283. [paper] 

Waldman, Michael, Sean Nicholson, Nodir Adilov, and John Williams, 2008, "Autism Prevalence and Precipitation Rates in California, Oregon, and Washington Counties," Journal of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine  162(11): 1026-1034. [abstract] [paper]