Benjamin Handel is an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2010. He received his AB from Princeton and his PhD from Northwestern. He was named an National Bureau of Economic Research faculty research fellow in industrial organization in 2011 and became a research associate in 2016, when he also became Co-Director of the NBER working group on insurance markets. He is an expert on health care business and policy, and has worked with numerous businesses and policymakers in partnerships to research key topics in health care economics.

Handel’s work is primarily concerned with the economic analysis of health insurance markets. He has studied the role of adverse selection, the nature of competition between insurance providers, and the role of behavioral economics in explaining insurance plan choice. In addition to his work in health insurance markets, he has reserached incentive design and adoption of information technology by health care providers, as well as beahvioral interventions to improve consumer health care behaviors.

Handel received the 2018 ASHEcon Medal for top health economist under the age of 40. His 2015 Econometrica research paper with Igal Hendel and Michael Whinston on “Equilibria in Health Exchanges” was awarded the Econometric Society’s Frisch Medal. Handel is also a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship.

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