Mariana P Carrera PhD
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Notable Papers:
- “Can Financial Incentives Help People Trying to Establish New Habits? Experimental Evidence with New Gym Members” (with Heather Royer, Mark Stehr, and Justin Sydnor) Journal of Health Economics, Forthcoming.
- “Do Physicians Respond to the Costs and Cost-Sensitivity of their Patients?” (with Dana Goldman, Geoffrey Joyce, and Neeraj Sood) American Economic Journal- Economic Policy, Feb 2018: 10(1).
- “Physicians are more likely than non-physicians to use brand-name drugs to treat their chronic conditions” (with Niels Skipper) Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Sep 2017: 71(9).
Biographical Info
The research interests of Mariana Carrera, PhD, lie in the fields of health economics and behavioral economics. Within these fields, Carrera examines three main areas. The first is agency problems in healthcare, with a focus on physician prescribing decisions. Carrera is investigating how physicians respond to patient co-payments when choosing which drug to prescribe and how the complex variation in co-payments across insurance plans can obstruct their response. Second, she is interested in how consumers learn from new information and from social norms, with a focus on health-related decisions. A third area of research is examining how insights from behavioral economics can help improve health behavior with a focus on employer wellness programs. Some of her current projects in this area center on commitment devices for exercise and for healthy eating.
Carrera received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She has published in the American Economic Journal- Economic Policy, the Journal of Health Economics, and the American Journal of Managed Care. Carrera is the recipient of several Weatherhead School of Management Intramural Funding research grants and has also received a research grant from the National Institute of Health.