Mark Duggan is an expert in the economics of the pharmaceutical, hospital, and health insurance industries. Professor Duggan’s research areas include Traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, disability insurance, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), pharmaceutical and hospital pricing, health insurance pricing, and patent reform.
Testimony and consulting in healthcare, pharmaceutical, and merger matters
Professor Duggan has testified in depositions, at trial, and before the Senate Budget Committee and the Social Security Subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means.
His consulting and testimony have addressed the False Claims Act, reimbursement disputes between payors and providers; healthcare competition; and pricing, marketing, and competition issues in the pharmaceutical industry. Professor Duggan’s experience includes:
- In a False Claims Act matter involving risk adjustment in the Medicare Advantage program, he evaluated the program’s capitated payment and risk-adjustment structure relative to traditional Medicare. He also analyzed, as a matter of economic theory, how plans would respond to changes in government reimbursement.
- In payor-provider disputes, he has analyzed the fair market value of out-of-network services.
- In a matter involving the biopharmaceutical industry, he evaluated the relative contributions of R&D, price negotiations, commercial marketing, and manufacturing capabilities to overall value creation.
- In the proposed merger of Aveanna Healthcare LLC and Maxim Healthcare Services, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) retained Professor Duggan to analyze the potential effects on the market for nursing services. After the parties abandoned the transaction, the FTC closed its investigation.
Research on government benefit programs, healthcare markets, and AI
Professor Duggan’s research spans health economics and public finance. His work on the healthcare sector focuses on the pharmaceutical, hospital, and health insurance industries. His public finance research measures the effects of large-scale government expenditure programs that provide retirement, healthcare, disability, and unemployment insurance benefits, and examines public policy interventions to reduce homelessness. He has also analyzed the impact of mergers in the defense industry.
Professor Duggan’s current projects include studies that estimate the effect of changes in the healthcare sector, such as public hospital privatizations; evaluate the introduction and diffusion of new pharmaceutical treatments for cancer patients; and analyze the impact of AI on the delivery and administration of healthcare for Medicaid patients.
Academic publications, editorial roles, and awards
Professor Duggan publishes his research in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He is a current member of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management editorial board and has been coeditor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and the Journal of Public Economics.
Professor Duggan was awarded the ASHEcon Medal for his significant contributions to the field of health economics. He also received the National Institute for Health Care Management’s Health Care Research Award for coauthored work on Medicare Part D. He was selected to deliver the annual Martin Feldstein Lecture at the 2026 meeting of the annual Summer Institute conference of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Many media outlets have featured Professor Duggan’s research, including The Economist, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Academic appointments, economic policy leadership, and teaching awards
Before joining the University of Toronto, Professor Duggan served for more than a decade as the Wayne and Jodi Cooperman Professor of Economics at Stanford University. From 2015 to 2024, Professor Duggan also served as the Trione Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).
In 2022, he received the Stanford Economics Department’s Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award and was honored in 2025 with the university’s Miriam Aaron Roland Volunteer Service Prize.
Previously, Professor Duggan served on the faculties of the University of Chicago, the University of Maryland, and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has supervised more than sixty Ph.D. students during his nearly three-decade academic career and has taught many courses at the undergraduate and graduate level.
From 2009 to 2010, he was the senior economist for healthcare policy at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.