Joseph P. Newhouse, Distinguished Fellow 2025
Joseph P. Newhouse is research professor and John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management, Emeritus at Harvard University. Newhouse was a member of the faculties of the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. For many years, Newhouse was the Director of the Division of Health Policy Research and Education, and Director of the Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy at Harvard. Newhouse spent the first twenty years of his career at RAND, where he designed and directed the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. He moved to Harvard in 1991 and remained on the faculty until he became emeritus.
The theme of Newhouse’s research was that one could understand the value and efficiency of the health care system using empirical analysis. Newhouse designed and directed the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, one of the pioneering experiments in the social sciences. In his papers reporting the results of the experiment, along with a 1996 book on the topic (Free for All? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment), Newhouse and colleagues showed that medical care utilization responded to out-of-pocket prices, and that raising cost sharing did not have large adverse effects on health. These results were essential in helping to design medical care cost sharing policies. Newhouse also worked extensively on understanding the reasons for medical are cost increases. In a number of influential papers (for example, “Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?” JEP, 1992), Newhouse attributed medical spending increases to technological innovation in medicine, which could have high value. He was skeptical both that medical spending would fall greatly, and that such a change would be worth it. Twice, Newhouse won the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for the best paper in health economics.
Newhouse was the leader and often founder of many organizations for health economists. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Health Economics, co-editor of the Handbook of Health Economics, Volumes 1A and 1B, past President of the Association for Health Services Research (now AcademyHealth), past President of the International Health Economics Association, and the inaugural President of the American Society of Health Economists. Newhouse served as the vice-chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, served on the CBO Board of Health Advisers, on the Committee on National Statistics, on the Science, Technology, and Economic Policy board of the National Research Council, and as a regent of the National Library of Medicine. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Joe Newhouse is an outstanding advisor and mentor. He encouraged generations of students to study health economics, providing comments on papers and career advice when needed. In 2014, he won the Victor R. Fuchs Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Health Economists.