By Anne M. Burton

Josh Gottlieb, Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, is the 2025 recipient of the ASHEcon Medal. The award recognizes exceptional early-career scholars whose work has already had a major impact on the field. I spoke with Josh about his approach to research, publishing across disciplines, and the role of economists in public debates. Professor Gottlieb also serves as the Co-Director of the Becker-Friedman Institute’s Health Economics Initiative and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Talking to the Media

Anne: Congratulations on receiving the ASHEcon medal! I want to ask you about high-impact research in a slightly different context than most economists might think of (as in, not citations or journals): your work has been written up over 200 times in the media and you’ve also written policy memos and op-eds. Tell us about the process and what about it is important to you.

Josh: It’s useful for researchers to interact with the rest of society, but essential that we continue to act as scholars when we do so. The point of academia is to get the answer right, so we have to maintain that lodestar. When I describe my research to the public, I work hard to accurately convey both what we learned and the limitations. For instance, when I talk to journalists about healthcare labor markets, they would love to quote me saying that healthcare workers—and especially doctors—are paid “too much” or “too little”. But my view is that the research doesn’t justify such a simplistic claim.  If researchers over-simplify things in pursuit of a particular policy goal, their scholarship no longer adds value compared with any other activist. This is not always easy, since a simple story is easier to describe and to sell!

Publishing Across Disciplines

Anne: You’ve published in economics journals, medical journals, and health policy journals. For budding health economists or health-services researchers who are trying to find the best home for their work, what makes each type of journal a good match for a paper? What are the differences in the peer-review process or the types of research each field is looking to publish?

Josh: The plus for economics journals is that they tend to be better at engaging with economic principles. The downside is that economics is in an equilibrium where the revision process can be excruciatingly slow and each top paper practically turns into a book. I think both economics and medical journals could learn something from the other side: medicine and health policy should think harder about economic tradeoffs, and make their policy articles less political.

On the other side, economics journals could improve by accepting more papers that have something interesting to say, but which may not include every extension and thus not be the last word on the topic. In fact, papers that contain some novel results, but not every perspective on a topic, may even be even more influential: they can teach us how to look at a problem in a new way, but by not exploring every angle they can spur follow-on research. For instance, my research on administrative costs began with a short paper that documented some surprising facts, but saved lots of economic questions and policy implications to be explored in other work. I think this turned out well, since people learned about the topic and how we can actually marshal data to study it. Since then, many other researchers have built on this and it’s developed into an entire area carefully exploring the economics of administrative costs in healthcare.

Taking Research Risks

Anne: Now let’s talk about your research. What do you think is the most impactful paper (or strand of research) you’ve written so far, and why?

Josh: The research that gets me most excited is the work that has seemed riskiest when it started. The projects where I had a topic in mind, but didn’t know where the data would take me, or even what questions I’d end up asking, have been most challenging but also most gratifying to complete. It’s especially rewarding to start exploring a topic and then see other researchers build on that work and take it in new directions. For example, my work on the geography of healthcare suggests we need to analyze healthcare markets differently than what’s usually been done. I’m excited to see that other researchers are now building on those ideas and taking them in directions my coauthors and I did not anticipate.

Advice for Early-Career Scholars

Anne: What advice do you have for more junior people in the profession who are figuring out the process of carving out a research agenda?

Josh: Important research tends to spur more questions and new ideas. So it is ok—and probably even advisable—not to know where your future research will go. In the process of answering one question, you uncover more anomalies and develop ideas with unexpected implications.  For example, each paper I write on healthcare labor markets leads to more questions, and more ideas of new aspects to explore next. As you work on the topic, you get a better sense of which follow-up projects are best to pursue next. So it becomes a richer area to explore, with papers adding up over time, and you have organically developed a research agenda. In this context, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that there are a lot of questions to answer, given that healthcare employment is already so sizable, and continues to grow.

Final Thoughts

Anne: Thanks for taking the time for this interview. Is there anything else you would like to add?

Josh: I’d like to thank ASHEcon once again for this very kind recognition. I also want to thank the profession for being so supportive of my research, encouraging of new ideas, and open-minded about the results. It’s essential for us to ask hard questions, do the most rigorous research we can, and genuinely try to get the answers right.

Health is such a large part of the economy, of public budgets, and of people’s well-being, that it is incumbent on us to ask the right questions and genuinely try to get the right answers—not necessarily the popular or politically expedient ones. If we think there is only one right answer, we’re not doing research, and there would be no point in having papers or journals or academia. So I am grateful to many colleagues throughout the economics and health economics professions for keeping our field rigorous and focused on searching for the truth—how the economy works and what that means for health and healthcare.