About

Claudio Lucarelli is an Associate Professor of Health Care Management and the Director of the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. His academic work focuses on health care systems, including their structure, financing, reimbursement, and delivery, with a particular emphasis on comparing health care systems across different countries. Lucarelli's courses examine the roles of private and public sectors in health care, system efficiency, equity, and the adoption of new technologies, drawing lessons from countries such as Germany, Canada, Japan, the UK, and emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil. His research interests include the industrial organization of health care, health economics, and structural econometric approaches. Lucarelli has contributed to understanding hospital and insurer competition, health insurance demand, technology adoption, and market entry and exit dynamics within health care. His work often involves analyzing the impact of system design on health care quality, cost, and equity, providing insights for policy and management in health care systems worldwide.

Research topics

• Artificial Intelligence
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Medicine
• Business
• Medical emergency
• Geography
• Industrial organization
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• Frontiers in Operations: Last-Mile Delivery in Healthcare: Drone Delivery for Blood Products in Rwanda

  Manufacturing & Service Operations Management · 2026-03-19 · 1 citations

  article

  Problem definition: Last-mile delivery is one of the most challenging and costly facets of the supply chain. Using data from Rwandan public hospitals that transfuse blood, we examine whether and the extent to which the adoption of a technological innovation—delivery drones—for the last-mile delivery of blood products impacts the way hospitals manage the inventory of these products and the downstream health outcomes for patients. Methodology/results: To estimate causal effects, we exploit the staggered rollout of the drone delivery system and use a generalized difference-in-differences approach. We find that all hospitals, regardless of their distance to the drone port, substantially decrease their on-hand inventory of red blood cells, most notably for the most flexible product (i.e., type O blood). Hospitals also meaningfully reduce their wastage of red blood cells, especially for “in-between” products that are neither the most flexible nor the least flexible (i.e., type B blood). With respect to patient health outcomes, we document large reductions in in-hospital mortality for two health conditions where timely access to blood is a critical input for treatment: postpartum hemorrhage and trauma. Interestingly, this change is concentrated among hospitals closer to the drone port, and these are the same set of hospitals that increase the transfusion of blood products. This increase is especially pronounced among blood products that cannot be held in stock at the hospital, including platelets and fresh frozen plasma. Managerial implications: Our results highlight key considerations for decision makers allocating scarce resources to improve hospital operations and health outcomes. Given that health improvements are not realized by all hospitals, operational decisions—such as the number and location of drone ports—should ensure clinically meaningful delivery windows for time-sensitive medical care. History: This paper has been accepted in the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Frontiers in Operations Initiative. Funding: This work was supported by the Wharton Dean’s Research Fund, Wharton Global Initiatives Research Program, Claude Marion Endowed Faculty Scholar Award, Mack Institute Research Fellowship, and Fishman-Davidson Center for Service and Operations Management. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2025.0055 .

  PublisherDOI

• Die Auswirkungen des Inflation Reduction Act auf pharmazeutische Innovationen

  2025-01-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Der Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) führte zu einer wesentlichen Änderung der US-amerikanischen Arzneimittelregulierung. Während beabsichtigt war, die Kosten zu senken und den Zugang zu verbessern, indem die Marktmacht der Arzneimittelhersteller eingeschränkt würde, wurden gleichzeitig die erwarteten Erträge und Anreize für Forschung, Entwicklung und Innovationen nach der Zulassung geschwächt. Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die Literatur, in der diese Auswirkungen quantifiziert und mit den ursprünglichen Schätzungen öffentlicher Organisationen verglichen werden. Außerdem wird untersucht, wie der IRA mit dem nichtlinearen Versicherungsleistungsdesign von Medicare Part D interagiert und die marginalen Preisgrenzen verändert, was sich auf die Teilnahme auswirken könnte. Abschließend werden alternative Rahmenbedingungen für die Preisregulierung analysiert, die den Gemeinnutzen und die Heterogenität der Patienten besser widerspiegeln könnten.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Firm learning in a selection market

  Journal of Risk & Insurance · 2025-10-14 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract Creating new markets is a prevalent approach for implementing large social programs. Assuming firms have full information about the relevant parameters upon market inception is commonplace in the literature. In contrast, we develop an adaptive learning model with selection to study how firms' knowledge of demand and cost affects the market equilibrium. We estimate alternative learning models with data from the California ACA exchange and assess their external validity using novel data on firms' predicted costs from insurer rate filings. The learning models provide statistically significant improvements in fit relative to the standard model that assumes firms have full information. Most of the improvement results from allowing firms to learn about the relationship between demand and cost. Firms with full information can increase profit, but at taxpayers' expense. Regulation that prohibits firms from using certain consumer information to set premiums makes them react more to the information they can use.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Firm Learning in a Selection Market

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science
  • Business
  PublisherDOI

• Towards a general political economy of private supplementary health insurance

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-06-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter explores the political economy of private health insurance supplementation within a majoritarian democracy from a theoretical point of view. We look at the effect of private insurances on public spending and with that, the factors determining the level of political support for public and private systems. The chapter offers statistical analyses and several cases studies to offer factual evidence of what are the most likely political equilibria in a set of world-wide countries. Our findings show how in some political equilibria, the presence of private insurance supplementation for higher income people, does make lower income people better off.

  PublisherDOI

• Leapfrogging for Last-mile Delivery in Health Care

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022 · 10 citations

  • Business
  • Medical emergency
  • Medicine
  PublisherDOI

• Price Indices and the Value of Innovation with Heterogenous Patients

  Journal of Health Economics · 2022-05-10 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• What Do Health Insurance Deductibles Do to Health Care Spending Growth and its Efficiency?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Price Indices and the Value of Innovation with Heterogenous Patients

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-01-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Many countries use uniform cost-effectiveness criteria to determine whether to adopt a new medical technology for the entire population. This approach assumes homogeneous preferences for expected health benefits and side effects. We examine whether new prescription drugs generate welfare gains when accounting for heterogeneous preferences by constructing qualityadjusted price indices for colorectal cancer drug treatments. We find that while the efficacy gains from newer drugs do not justify high prices for the population as a whole, innovation improves the welfare of sicker, late-stage cancer patients. A uniform evaluation criterion would not permit these innovations despite welfare gains to a subpopulation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Price Indices and the Value of Innovation with Heterogenous Patients

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gautam Gowrisankaran

  Centre for Economic Policy Research

  21 shared

• Robert Town

  16 shared

• Sean Nicholson

  Policy Analysis (United States)

  15 shared

• Mark V. Pauly

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  14 shared

• Molly Frean

  Analysis Group (United States)

  12 shared

• Lynn M. Hua

  University of Pennsylvania

  12 shared

• Aliza S. Gordon

  Public Policy Institute of California

  12 shared

• Kosali Simon

  Indiana University Bloomington

  11 shared

Labs

• Health Care ManagementPI

Awards & honors

• 1st Place, 2025 POMS College of Sustainable Operations Best…
• 2nd Place, 2023 INFORMS Public Sector OR Best Paper Competit…
• Finalist, 2023 INFORMS Health Applications Society Best Stud…