Kathleen J. Mullen

Photo of Kathleen Mullen

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Economist; Associate Director, RAND Center for Disability Research; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Santa Monica Office

Education

Ph.D. in economics, University of Chicago

Overview

Biography

Kathleen Mullen is an economist at the RAND Corporation and associate director of the RAND Center for Disability Research. She is also a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her work addresses the economics of retirement, health, and disability, with an emphasis on the incentive effects of social insurance programs such as Social Security and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). In her research, Mullen has employed a variety of research designs applying both reduced form and structural econometric methods. She has pursued research on, among other things, the effects of SSDI receipt on labor supply; the effects of long waiting times on the subsequent labor force participation and earnings of rejected SSDI applicants; how changes in eligibility requirements affect SSDI or Social Security claiming; and the effects of changes in Social Security or disability insurance incentives in other countries on labor supply for workers at older ages, and what those findings suggest about potential evaluations of reforms in the United States. Mullen received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Recent Projects

  • The effects of disability insurance benefit receipt on labor supply
  • Human capital costs of disability insurance application
  • Determinants of disability insurance claiming
  • Estimating structural models of retirement using policy variation from other countries

Selected Publications

Maestas, Nicole, Kathleen J. Mullen and Alexander Strand, "Does Disability Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt," American Economic Review (forthcoming)

Hurd, Michael D., Paco Martorell, Adeline Delavande, Kathleen J. Mullen and Kenneth M. Langa, "Monetary Costs of Dementia in the United States," The New England Journal of Medicine, 368:1326-1334, 2013

Mullen, Kathleen J., Richard G. Frank, and Meredith Rosenthal, "Can You Get What You Pay For? Pay-for-Performance and the Quality of Healthcare Providers," RAND Journal of Economics, 41(1):64-91, 2010

Hansen, Karsten T., James J. Heckman, and Kathleen J. Mullen, "The Effect of Schooling and Ability on Achievement Test Scores," Journal of Econometrics, 121(1,2):39-98, 2004

Honors & Awards

  • 2005 Dennis J. Aigner Award, Journal of Econometrics

Commentary

Dementia's Growing Cost to Caregivers — Apr 29, 2013

  • the RWJF's Human Capital Blog