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Zack Cooper.

Zack Cooper

Associate

Expertise: competition policy, health economics, incentive design, comparative health policy

Telephone:
+12037853144
Email:
zachary.cooper@yale.edu
Connect:
Twitter
Website
Links:
CEP Growth
Yale University

Biography

Dr Zack Cooper is an Associate Professor of Public Health and of Economics at Yale University where he also serves as director of Health Policy at the school’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies and an Associate of the Centre for Economic Performance. Prof Cooper is a health economist whose work is focused on producing rigorous, empirical evidence that can inform public policy. In his academic scholarship, he has analysed the impact of competition in hospital and insurance markets, studied the influence of price transparency on consumer behaviour, and examined the influence of electoral politics on health care spending growth. He has published his research in leading economics and medical journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also presented his research at the White House, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and did his Masters and PhD at the London School of Economics.

Current areas of research include:

  • Health care spending on the privately insured Read More...

Publications

Journal article
Hospital prices grew substantially faster than physician prices for hospital-based care in 2007-14

Evidence suggests that growth in providers' prices drives growth in health care spending on the privately insured. However, existing work has not systematically differentiated between the growth rate of hospital prices a... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, Martin Gaynor, Nir J. Harish, Harlan M. Krumholz and John Van Reenen

01 February 2019

Journal article
The price ain't right? hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28% of individuals with employersponsored health insurance in the United States to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-h... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, Martin Gaynor and John Van Reenen

01 February 2019

Journal article
Variation in health spending growth for the privately insured from 2007 to 2014

We examined the growth in health spending on people with employer-sponsored private insurance in the period 2007-14. Our analysis relied on information from the Health Care Cost Institute data set, which includes insuran... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, Martin Gaynor, Charles Gray and John Van Reenen

01 February 2019

Journal article
Does competition from private surgical centres improve public hospitals’ performance? Evidence from the English National Health Service

This paper examines the impact of a government programme which facilitated the entry of for-profit surgical centres to compete against incumbent National Health Service hospitals in England. We examine the impact of comp... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stephen Gibbons and Matthew Skellern

01 October 2018

CEP discussion papers
Surprise! Out-of-network billing for emergency care in the United States

Using insurance claims data capturing 8.9 million emergency episodes, we show that in 22% of cases, patients attended in-network hospitals, but were treated by out-of-network physicians. We find that out-of-network billi... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Fiona Scott Morton and Nathan Shekita

18 December 2017

CEP discussion papers
Politics, hospital behaviour and health care spending

This paper examines the link between legislative politics, hospital behaviour, and health care spending. When trying to pass sweeping legislation, congressional leaders can attract votes by adding targeted provisions tha... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Amanda Kowalski, Eleanor Neff Powell and Jennifer Wu

14 December 2017

CEP discussion papers
Does competition from private surgical centres improve public hospitals' performance? Evidence from the English National Health Service

This paper examines the impact of competition from government-facilitated entry of private, specialty surgical centres on the efficiency and case mix of incumbent public hospitals within the English NHS. We exploit the f... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stephen Gibbons and Matthew Skellern

07 June 2016

CEP discussion papers
The price ain't right? Hospital prices and health spending on the privately insured

We use insurance claims data covering 28 percent of individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance in the US to study the variation in health spending on the privately insured, examine the structure of insurer-hosp... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, Martin Gaynor and John Van Reenen

15 December 2015

CEP US election analysis papers
Healthcare Reform: The US Policy Debate

The ability of the next US president to rein in spending on healthcare and improve the productivity of the healthcare system is largely going to determine the country’s fiscal future. That is one of the conclusions of th... Read more...

Zack Cooper

24 October 2012

CEP discussion papers
Does Competition Improve Public Hospitals' Efficiency? Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in the English National Health Service

This paper uses a difference-in-difference style estimation strategy to test separately the impact of competition from public sector and private sector hospitals on the efficiency of public hospitals. Our identification ... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stephen Gibbons, Simon Jones and Alistair McGuire

20 February 2012

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
In brief... Competition in the public sector: good for the goose, good for the gander?

Zack Cooper outlines evidence on the benefits of competition in healthcare - and the implications for the coalition government's NHS reform plans.... Read more...

Zack Cooper

21 June 2011

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
The NHS White Paper: evolution or revolution?

Zack Cooper assesses the coalition government's plans for healthcare reform... Read more...

Zack Cooper

09 November 2010

Blog
Hospital competition is good for patients, and for efficiency

The coalition government has taken great pains to assure the public that the NHS budget will be ‘ring-fenced’, and thus not subject to the cuts of 20 to 40 per cent forecast for other Whitehall departments. At the same t... Read more...

Zack Cooper

12 July 2010

CEP discussion papers
Does Hospital Competition Improve Efficiency? An Analysis of the Recent Market-Based Reforms to the English NHS

This paper uses a difference-in-difference estimator to test whether the introduction of patient choice and hospital competition in the English NHS in January 2006 has prompted hospitals to become more efficient. Efficie... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stephen Gibbons, Simon Jones and Alistair McGuire

01 June 2010

CEP election analysis papers
Health: Higher Spending has Improved Quality, But Productivity Must Increase

Read more...

Zack Cooper and Alistair McGuire

01 April 2010

SERC Discussion Papers
Does Hospital Competition Save Lives? Evidence from the English NHS Patient Choice Reforms

This paper examines whether or not hospital competition in a market with fixed reimbursement prices can prompt improvements in clinical quality. In January 2006, the British Government introduced a major extension of the... Read more...

Zack Cooper, Stephen Gibbons, Simon Jones and Alistair McGuire

01 January 2010

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