Melissa Thomasson

Melissa A. Thomasson is an American economist. She is the Julian Lange Professor of Economics at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she has also been the Chair of the Department of Economics. She studies economic history, focusing on the evolution of health insurance and health care in the United States.

Melissa Thomasson
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Doctoral advisorPrice V. Fishback

Education and positions

Thomasson attended the University of Puget Sound, where in 1992 she obtained a Bachelor of Science in economics with minors in mathematics and English literature.[1] She then attended the University of Arizona, where she earned an MA in economics in 1993 followed by a PhD in economics in 1998.[1] Her dissertation, From Sickness to Health: The Twentieth-Century Development of the Demand for Health Insurance, was supervised by Price V. Fishback.[1]

After obtaining her PhD, Thomasson joined the economics faculty at Miami University, where she was named Julian Lange Professor of Economics in 2015 and Department Chair in 2019.[1] Thomasson is the first woman to chair the economics department at Miami University.[2] In 1999, Thomasson also joined the National Bureau of Economic Research, at first as a Faculty Research Fellow and then as a Research Associate from 2005 onwards.[1]

Research

Thomasson's research focuses on the economic history of health insurance and health care in the United States. She has studied the relationship between American tax policy and health coverage,[3] the development of health insurance in America,[4] and the economic causes and implications of the evolution of childbirth from an event that mostly occurred at home to one that typically occurs in hospitals.[5] Her 2004 paper "Early Evidence of an Adverse Selection Death Spiral?" won the 2005 award for the best paper published in the journal Explorations in Economic History in the previous year.[1]

Thomasson has studied the impact that pandemics and epidemics can have on education, taking as a case the closure of schools during the 1916 New York City polio epidemic.[6] During that epidemic, school openings in New York City were delayed by two weeks, and Thomasson and her co-authors demonstrated that the closures had a measurable affect on the children who experienced it, lowering the number of achievements they had when they graduated and also decreasing their probability of graduating at all.[7] Thomasson has also shown that once schools did reopen, about 200,000 of the 829,000 students in the city did not return immediately, for fear of contracting the disease.[6] During the widespread school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the NPR outlet WAMU cited Thomasson's research on this topic as a signal that parents might not permit their children to return to school immediately after schools officially reopen.[6] An article in Forbes, citing the WAMU report on Thomasson's research, speculated that many parents might experiment with alternative means of education such as homeschooling shortly after policies allow schools to reopen.[8]

Thomasson has been regularly interviewed in news outlets on topics relating to health care and health coverage in America. She has studied the pressures that act on drug prices, and she discussed the economic history of drug prices in an interview for WNYC.[9] She has also been interviewed on the topic of health care in America for NBC,[10] WGBH,[11] and NPR.[12]

Selected works
  • "From sickness to health: the twentieth-century development of US health insurance", Explorations in Economic History (2002)
  • "The importance of group coverage: How tax policy shaped US health insurance", American Economic Review (2003)
  • "From home to hospital: The evolution of childbirth in the United States, 1928–1940", Explorations in Economic History (2008)

References
  1. "Melissa Thomasson profile". Miami University. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  2. Gunter, Cosette (18 February 2020). "Miami appoints first female economics chair". The Miami Student. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  3. Thomasson, Melissa (September 2003). "The importance of group coverage: How tax policy shaped US health insurance" (PDF). American Economic Review. 93 (4): 1371–1384. doi:10.1257/000282803769206359. PMID 29058846.
  4. Thomasson, Melissa (July 2002). "From sickness to health: the twentieth-century development of US health insurance". Explorations in Economic History. 39 (3): 233–253. doi:10.1006/exeh.2002.0788.
  5. Melissa Thomasson; Jaret Treber (January 2008). "From home to hospital: The evolution of childbirth in the United States, 1928–1940" (PDF). Explorations in Economic History. 45 (1): 76–99. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2007.07.001. S2CID 54670409.
  6. Kamenetz, Anya (24 April 2020). "9 Ways Schools Will Look Different When (And If) They Reopen". Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  7. "Coronavirus: How the lost generation will turn out". The Australian. 29 April 2020. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  8. McDonald, Kerry (11 May 2020). "Four K-12 Education Models That May Gain Popularity During COVID-19". Forbes. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  9. "Why Are Life-Saving Drugs So Expensive?". The Leaonard Lopate Show. WNYC. 16 October 2015. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  10. White, Martha C. (5 June 2018). "Medicare spending on name-brand drugs rose by 77 percent over five years, even as usage fell". NBC News. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  11. Herwick III, Edgar B. (20 November 2019). "Why Aren't Dental Benefits Typically Included With Health Insurance?". WGBH. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
  12. Alex Blumberg; Adam Davidson (22 October 2009). "Accidents Of History Created U.S. Health System". NPR. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
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