Abby Alpert is an Assistant Professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.  She is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  Her research interests are in health economics and public finance. Her work focuses on the economics of the pharmaceutical sector encompassing two main areas: 1) the impacts of government intervention in pharmaceutical markets and 2) the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the opioid epidemic.  Her recent research explores how vertical integration has impacted the Medicare prescription drug insurance market, the consequences of direct-to-consumer advertising on prescription drug spending and utilization, and how Medicaid utilization management policies impact access to prescription drugs for vulnerable populations.  Her work has also contributed to understanding the root causes of the opioid epidemic and the unintended consequences of supply-side policies aimed at reducing opioid abuse. Additionally, her recent research studies the impacts of opioid abuse on the labor market.  Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and has been featured in media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Economist. 

Prior to joining Wharton, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California in Irvine, and she was an Associate Economist at the RAND Corporation.  She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland and BS in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Chicago.