Darius Lakdawalla

Who is Darius Lakdawalla?

Darius Lakdawalla, Ph.D, is the Director of Research at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California and a managing director and founding partner of Precision Heath Economics, a health care consulting firm. Until the fall of 2009, he was the Director of Research at the Bing Center for Health Economics at the RAND Corporation.

Lakdawalla has research interests in the economics of risks to health and the organization of health care markets. Specifically, he has published papers that explore the reasons behind the declining use of nursing homes by the elderly, rising rates of obesity in America, acceleration in the rate of new HIV infections and the growth in disability among younger Americans.

Lakdawalla earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and his Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy and Mathematics, summa cum Laude from Amherst College. His work has been published in leading journals of economics, medicine, and health policy, and funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.