Emilia Simeonova
Professor, Carey Business School
Tell us a little bit about your research. How does it contribute to the overall goal of HBHI?
I am an applied economist with a research focus on health and health care. The main themes of my work are centered around the determinants of children's health, the intergenerational transmission of health, the contribution of the health care system to long-term health and health inequalities, and the role of patient behavior in the production of health.
What would you say most motivates you to do what you do? What are the goals you most want to accomplish in your work?
Doing research is fun and there are so many unanswered or badly answered questions in the health care space. If I can add one data point to the set of answers to these questions, I have achieved my primary goal.
Tell us about a current project you are working on and what potential impacts do the findings have? What makes you excited about it?
I am studying the effects of contraceptive pill subsides implemented in different municipalities in Sweden in the 1980s and 1990s on the generation of women affected by these subsidies and their children.
With the re-opening of the debate about reproductive freedoms in the US, the findings of this project are immediately relevant to the current policy discussions in the US.
Tell us about a project you are working on with other HBHI colleagues.
A project that was funded by HBHI as a pilot, which examines the geographic spillovers from non-pharmaceutical interventions intended to reduce the spread of COVID-19 on mobility in adjacent counties. We find that the spillover effects are of significant magnitude and go in the direction of the main effects, with sizes up to 30-40 percent of the direct effect.
What have you learned so far from being a part of HBHI?
Interdisciplinary work is fun, but not recommended for early-stage investigators.
