Leemore Dafny, PhD

Leemore Dafny is the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and a member of the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to joining Harvard in 2016, she served as Director of Health Enterprise Management, Herman Smith Professor of Hospital and Health Services Management, and a professor of strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Professor Dafny’s research examines competitive interactions among payers and providers of health care services, and the intersection of industry and public policy. Her work has been published in academic journals such as The American Economic Review and The New England Journal of Medicine, and featured in popular media such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Current projects include studies of consolidation in the U.S. hospital industry and the kidney dialysis industry, products and pricing on the public health insurance exchanges, co-payment coupons for prescription drugs, and the implications of for-profit ownership of insurance companies.

Professor Dafny graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company prior to earning her PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has won several teaching awards as well as Kellogg’s leading research prize, the Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award. Professor Dafny is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Associate Editor of Management Science, and a board member of the American Society of Health Economists and the Health Care Cost Institute.

Professor Dafny’s expertise spans both the public and private sectors. She serves on the Panel of Health Advisers for the Congressional Budget Office. In 2012–2013, she was Deputy Director for Health Care and Antitrust in the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. She also advises companies, government agencies, and nonprofits on a variety of issues including antitrust matters, strategic decisions, and public policy.