Katherine Baicker serves as the 15th provost of the University of Chicago and as the Emmett Dedmon Distinguished Service Professor. She is responsible for academic and research programs across the University and oversees its budget.
Baicker came to UChicago in 2017 to be the dean of the Harris School of Public Policy, where she served as dean for five years prior to being appointed provost. She is clear about what drew her to UChicago, and what has kept her here for close to a decade.
“UChicago stands as a beacon of rigorous inquiry, of following the evidence even if the conclusions are surprising or uncomfortable.” Baicker says. “I am grateful to be part of this community, now in a role that lets me see that play out to advance so many different fields.”
A leading scholar in the economic analysis of health care policy, Baicker’s research focuses on the effectiveness of public and private health insurance, including the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of care. Her large-scale research projects include the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a randomized evaluation of the effects of Medicaid coverage. Her research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, Health Affairs, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Before coming to the University of Chicago, Baicker was the C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a director of Eli Lilly, and a trustee of the Mayo Clinic. Baicker is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She serves on the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers and the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Health Care Management. She has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission, Chair of the Board of Directors of AcademyHealth, and Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. From 2005–2007, she served as a Senate-confirmed Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Baicker earned her BA in economics from Yale and her PhD in economics from Harvard.