Professor of Economics

Kenneth Chay joined Brown University in 2007. He is an empirical microeconomist who has done important research in the areas of labor, health, and the environment. His work is characterized by the importance of the questions being considered and the compelling nature of the inference that is provided. Among his most cited work includes an analysis of the effects of the 1970 Clean Air Act on infant mortality and a study of the impact of Civil Rights legislation on the convergence of black/white infant mortality in Mississippi.

Chay has won several awards arising from his health research, including an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship and the Kenneth J. Arrow Award from the International Health Economics Association for research previously funded by NIH.

With an ongoing research interest in persistent disparities in health, his current project uses detailed microdata to examine the impacts of Medicare PPS on the use of medical technology while also assessing the cost-effectiveness of medical technology in the hospital sector.

Scholarly Interests

Community health, Labor and health economics, Microeconomics

Affiliated Departments

Department of Economics