Meg Blume-Kohout

Associate Professor

Economics

Contact

Email

mblumeko@gettysburg.edu

Phone

(717) 337 - 6659

Box

Campus Box 0391

Address

339 Carlisle St.
Room 108
300 North Washington St.
Gettysburg, PA 17325-1400

Education

PhD (Policy Analysis) Pardee RAND Graduate School, 2009
MS (Environ. Health Sci.) University of California, Berkeley, 2002
BA (Economics) Williams College, 1996

Academic Focus

Applied Econometrics, Public Policy Analysis, Health Economics, Science Policy, STEM Higher Education and Workforce, Entrepreneurship

Government legislation, policies, and regulations—however well-intentioned—often result in unintended consequences. Professor Blume-Kohout is an economist, public policy analyst, and data scientist who employs theory and quantitative modeling approaches drawn from multiple disciplines—economics, psychology, sociology, statistics, and computer science—to answer public policy questions. Her research examines how government interventions impact STEM workforce participation, higher education, scientific R&D efforts and innovation, and entrepreneurial outcomes.

Courses Taught

Fundamentals of economics for citizens, businesses, nonprofits, and policymakers, through the lens of social issues. Microeconomics topics include making optimal production and consumption decisions with limited resources, gains from specialization and trade, price coordination, market competition versus market power, consequences of imperfect markets, and common remedies. Macroeconomics topics focus on measurement and determinants of headline statistics like GDP growth, unemployment, and inflation, interest rates, government deficits and debt, and effects of government spending, taxation, and income redistribution. Students that have received credit for ECON 103 cannot receive credit for ECON 105.
Introduction to economic analysis of health care markets and health policy. In this course, we use economic analysis to understand individuals' demand for medical care and their role in health production, socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes, uncertainty and the role of insurance, adverse selection and moral hazard problems, the roles of physicians and hospitals as suppliers, pharmaceutical innovation and medical technologies, and the role of government programs in the US and internationally. Prerequisite: ECON 103 or ECON 105. ECON 270 and PP 270 are cross-listed.

Article Entrepreneurship Lock and the Demand for Health Insurance: Evidence from the US Affordable Care Act (2024) ILR Review 77 (2): 199-226.
Article The Affordable Care Act and Women's Self-Employment in the United States (2023) Feminist Economics 29 (1): 174-204.
Article The Case of the Interrupting Funder: Dynamic Effects of R&D Funding and Patenting in U.S. Universities (2023) Journal of Technology Transfer 48 (4): 1221-1242.
Article Incentivizing STEM Participation: Evidence from the SMART Grant Program with Jacob Scott. (2022) Southern Economic Journal 89 (2): 373-405.
Book On What Basis? Seeking Effective Practices in Graduate STEM Education Commissioned Paper for National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Article Training the Scientific Workforce: Does Funding Mechanism Matter? with Dadhi Adhikari. Research Policy, 45(6): 1291-1303.
Article Why Are Some Foreign-Born Workers More Entrepreneurial Than Others? Journal of Technology Transfer, 41(6): 1327-1353.
Article Analyzing NIH Funding Patterns over Time with Statistical Text Analysis AAAI Workshops, March 2016.
Book When Going Gets Tough: Barriers and Motivations Affecting Arts Attendance with Sara R. Leonard & Jennifer Novak-Leonard. National Endowment for the Arts Report no. 59.
Article Effects of Federal Research Funding on Formation of University-Firm Biopharmaceutical Alliances with Krishna Kumar, Chris Lau, & Neeraj Sood. Journal of Technology Transfer, 40(5): 859-876.
Article University R&D Funding Strategies in a Changing Federal Funding Environment with Krishna Kumar & Neeraj Sood. Science & Public Policy, 42(3): 355-368.
Article Are Graduate Students Rational? Evidence from the Market for Biomedical Scientists PLoS ONE 8(12): e82759.
Article Market Size and Innovation: Effects of Medicare Part D on Pharmaceutical Research and Development with Neeraj Sood. Journal of Public Economics, 97:327-336
Article Does Targeted, Disease-Specific Public Research Funding Influence Pharmaceutical Innovation? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 31(3): 641-660