Speaker Biographies

October 31, 2005

Ernst R. Berndt is the Louis B. Seley professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and co-director of the Biomedical Enterprise Program at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He is also the director of the National Bureau of Economic Research Program on Technological Progress and Productivity Measurement and co-director of the Center for Biomedical Innovation at MIT. Until recently, he served as chairperson of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, an interagency advisory panel established by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous peer-reviewing journals; currently he is a member of the editorial board of Health Affairs. Much of Mr. Berndt's recent research has focused on price, output and outcomes measurement in the health care industries, and on regulatory policies at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

John E. Calfee is a resident scholar at AEI. From 1980 to 1986, he served in the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Calfee has taught marketing and consumer behavior in the business schools of the University of Maryland–College Park and Boston University, and was a visiting senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Calfee's research has focused on regulation, especially FDA regulation; health care; advertising and information; tort liability; and related areas. He is the author of Prices, Markets, and the Pharmaceutical Revolution (AEI Press, 2000) and Fear of Persuasion: A New Perspective on Advertising and Regulation (AEI Press, 1997).

Anna Cook joined the Congressional Budget Office as a principal analyst in 2002. Ms. Cook helped to produce the CBO's estimates of the impact of the Hatch-Waxman provisions in the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 on future prescription drug spending. More recently she was a co-author of two CBO reports examining Medicaid payments to pharmacies and the prices paid by federal purchasers for brand-name drugs. Currently, she is conducting research on Hatch-Waxman issues and prescription drug pricing. Previously, Ms. Cook worked at CBO from 1993 to 1998, producing reports covering Medicaid’s prescription drug rebate program, the effect of increased generic competition under the Hatch-Waxman Act on the pharmaceutical market, and the returns to research and development. From 1998 to early 2002, Ms. Cook worked at Mathematica Policy Research, conducting research on a variety of topics including the role of PBMs in managing a Medicare drug benefit and the experience of managed care organizations in Medicare.

Tomas J. Philipson is a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and a faculty member in the Department of Economics and the Law School at the University of Chicago. Mr. Philipson's research focus is on health economics. He served as senior economic advisor to the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during 2003–04 and subsequently as senior economic advisor to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2004–05. Mr. Philipson is a co-editor of the journal Forums in Health Economics and Policy of Berkeley Electronic Press and on the editorial board of the journal Health Economics. His research has been published widely in all leading academic journals of economics such as The American Economic Review, The Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Theory, and Journal of Health Economics. Mr. Philipson is the recipient of several international and national awards including the Kenneth Arrow Award of the International Health Economics Association in 2000 (for best paper in health economics) and the Distinguished Economic Research Award of The Milken Institute in 2003 (for best paper in any field of economics). He has consulted for both private corporations, including several U.S. Fortune 100 companies, and governments, domestically and internationally, including multi-lateral organizations such as The World Bank. Coverage of Mr. Philipson's research has appeared in numerous popular media outlets such as CNN, CBS, FOX News, National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Chicago Tribune.

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