About

Molly Schnell is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. She is involved in research that provides applied insights, focusing on strategic aspects within the field of management. Her role includes contributing to the academic community through her research and teaching activities at Kellogg.

Research topics

• Internal medicine
• Emergency medicine
• Medicine
• Virology
• Medical emergency
• Psychiatry
• Anesthesia
• Pharmacology

Selected publications

• Replication package for "Physician Behavior in the Presence of a Secondary Market: The Case of Prescription Opioids"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-04-30

  otherOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is the replication package for "Physician Behavior in the Presence of a Secondary Market: The Case of Prescription Opioids," by Molly Schnell. It contains (1) a README with detailed replication instructions and data descriptions, (2) all code required to reproduce the results, (3) publicly available data used in the analysis, and (4) instructions for accessing restricted-use data necessary to reproduce all tables and figures in the paper and online appendix.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication package for "Physician Behavior in the Presence of a Secondary Market: The Case of Prescription Opioids"

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026-04-30

  otherOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is the replication package for "Physician Behavior in the Presence of a Secondary Market: The Case of Prescription Opioids," by Molly Schnell. It contains (1) a README with detailed replication instructions and data descriptions, (2) all code required to reproduce the results, (3) publicly available data used in the analysis, and (4) instructions for accessing restricted-use data necessary to reproduce all tables and figures in the paper and online appendix.

  PublisherDOI

• Trauma at School: The Impacts of Shootings on Students’ Human Capital and Economic Outcomes

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2025-05-05 · 2 citations

  article

  Abstract We examine how shootings at schools—an increasingly common form of gun violence in the States—impact the educational and economic trajectories of students. Using linked schooling and labor market data in Texas from 1992 to 2018, we compare within-student and across-cohort changes in outcomes following a shooting to those experienced by students at matched control schools. We find that school shootings increase absenteeism and grade repetition, reduce high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion; and reduce employment and earnings at ages 24–26 years. We further find school-level increases in the number of leadership staff and reductions in retention among teachers and teaching support staff in the years following a shooting. The adverse impacts of shootings span student characteristics, suggesting that the economic costs of school shootings are universal.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impacts of Physician Payments on Patient Access, Use, and Health

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2024-06-26 · 34 citations

  articleSenior author

  We examine how supply-side health insurance generosity affects patient access, use, and health. Exploiting large, exogenous changes in Medicaid reimbursement rates for physicians, we find that increasing payments for new patient office visits reduces reports of providers turning away beneficiaries: closing the gap in payments between Medicaid and private insurers would reduce more than half of disparities in access among adults and would eliminate such disparities among children. We further find that higher physician reimbursement leads to more office visits, better self-reported health, and reduced school absenteeism among the program’s beneficiaries. (JEL G22, H51, I11, I13, I18, I38, J44)

  PublisherDOI

• Drivers of Racial Differences in C-Sections

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Gibt es einen Stellenwert einer prophylaktischen endoskopischen Vakuum-"Therapie" (EVT) zur Vermeidung von Anastomoseninsuffizienzen nach Rektumresektionen? Präsentation der Zwischenergebnisse der SEVTAR-Studie

  Zeitschrift für Gastroenterologie · 2024-09-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Drivers of Racial Differences in C-Sections

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-08-01 · 11 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  Black mothers with unscheduled deliveries are 25 percent more likely to deliver by C-section than non-Hispanic white mothers. The gap is highest for mothers with the lowest risk and is reduced by only four percentage points when controlling for observed medical risk factors, sociodemographic characteristics, hospital, and doctor or medical practice group. Remarkably, the gap disappears when the costs of ordering an unscheduled C-section are higher due to the unscheduled delivery occurring at the same time as a scheduled C-section. This finding is consistent with provider discretion—rather than differences in unobserved medical risk—accounting for persistent racial disparities in delivery method. The additional C-sections that take place for low-risk women when hospitals are unconstrained negatively impact maternal and infant health.

  PublisherDOI

• The Lasting Impacts of School Shootings on Youth Psychotropic Drug Use

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2024-05-01 · 3 citations

  article

  This paper estimates the effects of fatal school shootings on youth psychotropic drug use over the subsequent five and a half years. Using an event study approach that compares trends in drugs prescribed by providers practicing close to a school shooting relative to those practicing slightly farther away, we find that fatal school shootings lead to large increases in youth psychotropic drug use that persist for years after the event. These effects are driven primarily by increases in prescriptions for antid epressants and antipsychotics and are observed among both youths who were previously taking psychotropic medication and those who were not.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Competition on Physician Prescribing

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-01-01 · 15 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  This study investigates how competition influences the prescribing practices of physicians. U.S. state law changes granting nurse practitioners (NPs) the authority to prescribe controlled substances without physician oversight generate exogenous increases in competition by expanding patients’ options when seeking care. In response, we find that general practice physicians (GPs)—the physician specialty that competes most directly with NPs—significantly increase their prescribing of opioids and controlled anti-anxiety medications. GPs also increase their co-prescribing of opioids and benzodiazepines, a practice that violates prescribing guidelines. These effects are more pronounced in areas with more NPs per GP at baseline and lead to sizable increases in fatal drug overdoses. In contrast, we observe no changes in prescribing among physician specialties that do not compete with NPs, nor in the prescribing of drug classes not directly affected by the law changes. Our findings are consistent with a simple model of physician behavior in which competition for patients leads physicians to move toward the preferences of marginal patients. These results demonstrate that more competition will not always lead to improvements in patient care and can instead lead to excessive service provision.

  PublisherDOI

• The Expansionary and Contractionary Supply-Side Effects of Health Insurance

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Janet Currie

  Princeton University

  26 shared

• Diane Alexander

  University of Pennsylvania

  21 shared

• Hannes Schwandt

  20 shared

• Maya Rossin‐Slater

  Stanford University

  12 shared

• Ilya Rahkovsky

  Georgetown University

  8 shared

• Jessie Handbury

  University of Pennsylvania

  8 shared

• Jean‐Pierre Dubé

  6 shared

• Rebecca Diamond

  5 shared