SEAN NICHOLSON

Department of Health Care Systems,Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Sean Nicholson is an Assistant Professor in the Health Care Systems Department at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches courses in health care finance, health care information technology, and health economics.

Dr. Nicholson is currently conducting research in five areas: the pharmaceutical industry, the economics of the physician workforce, the functioning of health insurance markets, determinants of physician practice patterns, and measuring the costs associated with lost work time. Specific research projects include: examining the determinants of deal values between biotech and pharmaceutical companies; identifying factors that affect pharmaceutical R&D productivity; measuring the impact of pharmaceutical mergers; measuring risk selection in health insurance markets; examining whether physicians' treatment decisions are influenced by their patients' health outcomes and how their peers are treating patients; measuring physicians' rates of return to specialization over time; examining how medical students form income expectations, whether expectations are biased and efficient, and whether income prediction errors affect physician behavior.

Sean received a Ph.D. in economics in 1997 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1986. Prior to graduate school Sean worked for four years as a management consultant with APM.