Lan Zou

I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, advised by Tim Layton. My research interests lie in the intersection of health economics and insurance markets, with a focus on the Swiss mandatory health insurance market. Decision-making in health insurance often diverges from conventional rationality, influenced by various factors. My work spans from applying behavioral models using field data, enhancing decision-making in experiments, to studying the effects of premium subsidies on low-income individuals. My job market paper, awarded the Young Economist Best Paper Award at the European Risk and Insurance Annual Congress, answers how the structure of premium subsidies can either encourage or deter their intended beneficiaries from selecting optimal insurance plans, offering policymakers critical insights for refining subsidy frameworks.

The Swiss health insurance system has particularly piqued my interest; far from being a mere unique context, I consider it an ideal laboratory to juxtapose and analyze health issues against the backdrop of other global health insurance mechanisms. Its high regulation, while confining, intriguingly narrows down consumer decisions to insurance coverage levels, presenting an almost pristine setting for dissecting key issues in health insurance economics. I collaborate with the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health and have access to the Swiss administrative data covering the entire Swiss population. 

Read more about my research, google scholar.