About

Craig Garthwaite is the Herman R. Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services, a Professor of Strategy, and the Director of the Program on Healthcare at Kellogg. He is an applied economist whose research examines the business of healthcare with a focus on the interaction between private firms and public policies. His recent work in the payer and provider sectors has concentrated on the private sector effects of the Affordable Care Act, the operation and impact of Medicaid Managed Care plans, the responses of non-profit hospitals to financial shocks, and the economic effects of expanded social insurance programs such as Medicaid and Medicare for All. Additionally, Professor Garthwaite studies questions of pricing and innovation in the biopharmaceutical sector, including the effects of market size changes on investment in new product development, the evolution of precision medicine, patent protections, and the relationship between health insurance expansions and drug prices. His research has been published in prominent journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He is also a frequent media commentator, appearing in outlets like the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The New York Times, and has been featured on television and radio programs including Nightly Business Report and NPR Marketplace. Garthwaite received his B.A. and Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan and his PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland. His professional experience includes serving as Director of Research for the Employment Policies Institute and testifying before various legislative bodies on healthcare markets and reforms.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Economics
• Microeconomics
• Business
• Law
• Finance
• Actuarial science
• Public economics
• Industrial organization
• Data science
• Psychology
• Pharmacology
• Commerce
• Medicine
• Marketing
• Demographic economics
• Labour economics

Selected publications

• Coverage Isn’t Care: An Abundance Agenda for Medicaid

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Replication data for: The Market-Expanding Role of Regulatory Approval in Medicine

  Open MIND · 2026-02-01

  datasetSenior author

  Review of Economics and Statistics: Forthcoming

  DOI

• Economic Markets and Pharmaceutical Innovation

  The Journal of Economic Perspectives · 2025-05-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Pharmaceutical innovations reach the market after a long and risky process that requires large, fixed, and sunk investments. Governments provide incentives for firms to make these investments through various forms of intellectual property protection that attempt to provide a return on capital for investors. As a result, pharmaceutical innovation results from an explicit intersection of public policy and private market incentives. Developing optimal policy therefore requires understanding market features such as how innovation is financed, how firms commercialize pharmaceutical products, the influence of insurance coverage on consumption and spending, and how competition emerges after intellectual property protection ends.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Over the Top: The Rise of Streaming and the Television Industry Value Chain

  Kellogg School of Management eBooks · 2025-01-01

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Most-Favored-Nation Drug Pricing—How Courts Could Shape Future Health Regulation

  JAMA Health Forum · 2025-10-10 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  This Viewpoint discusses legal questions around the Trump administration’s recent Executive Order about most-favored-nation drug pricing in the US.

  PublisherDOI

• Boeing and Airbus: Large Commercial Aircraft, 2000–2021

  Kellogg School of Management Cases · 2024-07-15 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Boeing and Airbus, the leading manufacturers of large commercial aircraft, were locked in a battle for market share that drove down prices for their new planes. At about the same time, the two industry heavyweights began developing new aircraft families to address their projected future market needs. Large commercial aircraft (generally defined as those carrying more than 100 passengers) were among the world's most complex and expensive manufactured products. A wide-body jet comprising millions of parts and nearly 200 miles of wires and tubing could be priced at $300 million or more. Design and manufacturing took up to ten years, from initial research to a finished product. The process required large numbers of highly trained and specialized workers. It also took large amounts of capital; recent aircraft programs were estimated to cost more than $13 billion. Manufacturers had to invest in extensive and highly specialized facilities and equipment and commit to high attendant fixed costs. To maximize their development investment, manufacturers created aircraft “families” that used the same airframe or body as a platform for multiple models. Within each family were aircraft that varied in numerous dimensions, the most important of which were passenger capacity and flight range–critical determinants of the airline's strategy. In October 2007, the Airbus superjumbo A380 made its first flight. The A380 carried more passengers than any other plane in history and had as a solution to increased congestion at global mega-hub airports. Four years later, the Boeing 787, a smaller long-range aircraft, was launched to serve secondary cities in a point-to-point network. When these planes made their inaugural flights, the global environment had significantly changed from when they were first planned. China and other emerging Asian economies were growing rapidly, spawning immediate and long-term demand for more aircraft. At the same time, changes to the market for air travel had created opportunities for new products. These opportunities had not gone unnoticed by potential new entrants, which were positioning themselves to compete against the market leaders. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the profit potential of the global aircraft manufacturing industry in 2002 and 2011. Students can also identify the actions of participants that weakened or intensified the pressure on profits within the industry.

  PublisherDOI

• Boeing and Airbus: Large Commercial Aircraft, 2000–2021

  Kellogg School of Management eBooks · 2024-01-01

  book
  PublisherDOI

• Over the Top: The Rise of Streaming and the Television Industry Value Chain

  Kellogg School of Management Cases · 2023-06-07

  article1st authorCorresponding

  During the first quarter of the 21st century, the TV industry underwent rapid vertical consolidation. For decades, the industry had been divided into three basic levels: production (i.e., the studios that identified on-screen talent and facilitated the making of content); distribution (i.e., the TV channels that carried the content); and platform (i.e., the cable TV or satellite providers who brought the content to viewers). In the 2010s, however, an increasing number of companies in that value chain had begun to play on multiple levels. Streaming services such as Netflix were producing their own high-quality content, and both traditional TV channels and production companies (e.g., NBC, Paramount, and Disney) were circumventing the conventional value chain and building platforms to sell their content directly to viewers. This case uses a small set of examples—including the streaming service Netflix, the sports channel ESPN, and the movie channel AMC—to explore the economics of this new verticalized TV industry. It asks students how companies can create value and maximize profitability in TV.

  PublisherDOI

• Artificial Intelligence, the Evolution of the Healthcare Value Chain, and the Future of the Physician

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Guns and violence: The enduring impact of crack cocaine markets on young black males

  Journal of Public Economics · 2022-01-18 · 13 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Timothy Moore

  Purdue University System

  55 shared

• William N. Evans

  49 shared

• William N. Evans

  University of Notre Dame

  30 shared

• Matthew Notowidigdo

  University of Chicago

  29 shared

• Mark Duggan

  Kaiser Permanente

  24 shared

• Aparajita Goyal

  20 shared

• Tal Gross

  18 shared

• Christopher Ody

  Analysis Group (United States)

  15 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of Chicago

  2009

• M.A., Economics

  University of Chicago

  2005

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  2003

Awards & honors

• Young Economist Award, International Institute of Public Fin…
• Faculty Impact Teaching Award (2 Sections), Kellogg
• One Term Chairs' Core Course Teaching Award, Kellogg
• Impact Award, Kellogg School of Management, 2010
• Poet and Quants 40 Best under 40 Business School Professors…