Michael (Misha) Dworsky is a senior economist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. His research interests are in health economics, labor economics, public finance, and the economics of insurance. His work at RAND focuses on workers’ compensation, health insurance, disability, and health care utilization. Much of his work applies quasi-experimental research designs to large administrative datasets.
Dworsky is an expert in the California workers' compensation system and has led numerous empirical studies on workers' compensation in California. Recent or ongoing studies in this line of work have addressed topics such as COVID-19, post-traumatic stress disorder in public safety workers, the Subsequent Injuries Fund, and the Qualified Medical Examiner system. He is currently leading a NIOSH-funded study on racial and ethnic disparities in the economic consequences of injury. Dworsky also studies a range of topics in health economics, including the effect of minimum wage increases on employer-sponsored insurance and impacts of the Affordable Care Act on hospital utilization.
He has contributed to RAND's evaluation of the Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) Model Test in Medicare Advantage, serving as lead econometrician. He also is leading a study on tradeoffs between equity and efficiency when using rich consumer data in insurance pricing. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, American Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Health Affairs, and Health Services Research, among other outlets. Dworsky received his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.
Ph.D. in economics, Stanford University; B.A. in economics, philosophy, Williams College
