By Jim Flynn
For graduate students going on the economics job market, there is an abundance of resources and advice on how to place into a traditional economics department. For example, see the excellent “Guide to the Econ Job Market” by ASHEcon President-Elect John Cawley. Yet for many health economists, some of the most common and rewarding career tracks lie outside of economics departments. Medical schools, schools of public health, policy programs, consulting firms, and other research organizations now hire large numbers of economists, often with different expectations, timelines, and evaluation criteria than economics departments. In this article, I interviewed a panel of health economists working outside of economics departments about how their positions differ from academic economics, what their job market experiences looked like, and how these differences shaped their search and early careers. Let’s meet the panel:
Ashley Bradford is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her PhD in Public Affairs at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University in 2023.
Travis Donohoe is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. He received his PhD in Health Policy and Economics from Harvard in 2023.
Charles (Charlie) Gray* is a Senior Economist in the Life Sciences practice at Bates White, an economic consulting firm in Washington, D.C. He received his PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2024, and an MS in economics from Drexel University in 2016.
Katherine Wen is an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society and the Program in Public Policy Studies. She received her PhD in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University in 2021 and previously held a postdoc at Brown University.
Jim: What would you say is/are the biggest difference(s) between your position and a job in an academic economics department?
Ashley (Public Policy): The interdisciplinary nature of being in a school of public policy is the greatest difference. I work with environmental economists, philosophers, experts in cyber security, science and technology researchers, and urban policy experts. It’s a fun place to be. There are, of course, tradeoffs. For example, there aren’t many people in my school that I can directly collaborate with, but that environment helps you learn how to discuss your research in more creative ways.
Travis (Public Health): The biggest difference is the level of interdisciplinary collaboration, as you’re often the only economist on a team that includes colleagues from epidemiology, clinical sciences, social work, and others. Your role is often to bring an economic framework into broader scientific conversations and to translate between disciplines. A second major difference is the balance of teaching and research funding expectations. Public health faculty often teach less than in economics departments (for example, 1-2 courses per year), with stronger emphasis on securing external research funding, which career advancement depends upon.
Charlie (Econ Consulting): The three differences I notice the most are (1) the work product, (2) the timeline, and (3) how you’re evaluated. For (1), clients are typically law firms involved in litigation that requires economic expertise. The work product is often a written expert report that is some combination of relevant background on the industry, economic theory, and empirical analyses. These reports share some similarities with writing academic research, but the tone and intended audience are quite different. The reports should be an objective resource that educates the court about the relevant economic forces that are relevant to the litigation. However, there will always be an opposing side of the litigation that will likely have a different opinion. You can kind of think of opposing experts as being harsh referees that will have access to your data and code and try to find as many flaws with your analyses and assumptions as possible.
(2) The timelines and budgets can vary, and you can’t spend as much time on each project as you would like. There will generally be months where you don’t work on a project, and then periods where you are working steadily on it, and then a couple of weeks around report submission time where you are working a lot. The deadlines can be stressful and time-consuming, but also exciting and satisfying after you submit.
(3) How you are evaluated varies, but there will be some consideration for simple metrics such as the hours worked combined with some measure of the quality of your work product and whether people like working with you. Different firms have different cultures, but I would say that displaying some eccentricity in the econ consulting world is okay, but there is probably less room for it compared with academic departments.
Katherine (Medicine): The faculty in my department are purposefully very interdisciplinary, representing fields from social sciences, humanities, and public health. Our department also does not have a PhD program. The biggest difference between my department and a traditional academic economics department is probably publication outlets; the department values public health and medical journals, where papers are typically much shorter than those in econ journals. Also, there is a lot of flexibility in teaching – for example, I teach a vaccine policy course.
Jim: Did you also have interviews/flyouts with economics departments? If so, how are the interviews in your field different from traditional econ interviews/flyouts?
Travis (Public Health): Yes, interviews and flyouts are the norm, though expectations about them vary. At departments that are explicitly recruiting health economists, the process is often very similar to a traditional economics flyout. The focus is still on the quality of your job market paper. The main differences are that it’s useful to also articulate in the one-on-one interviews how you envision collaborating with colleagues from other disciplines and how your research agenda fits into potential grant-funding streams. However, there are places where the expectation is to present a broader portfolio of your work rather than a single paper. Many of these positions tend to be a less natural fit for economists just out of their PhD.
Katherine (Medicine): I did not interview with economics departments, but most of my interviews were with economists or graduates of health policy/health economics PhD programs, and some meetings were with clinicians. The questions during the job talk had more emphasis on public health relevance and policy impact. There was also discussion of my grant record and the feasibility of grants to support future research.
Ashley (Public Policy): I did not apply to any econ departments. I knew I would be a better fit for a school of public policy, public administration, or public affairs.
Charlie (Econ Consulting): Yes. The interviews and flyouts are similar in that you typically have a series of 30-40 minute 1-on-1 interviews and a job talk where you present your job market paper, though some econ consulting firms allot only 1-hour for your job talk (including questions from the audience). The most obvious difference in the interviews between econ consulting and academic jobs will be how you frame answers to questions. An econ consulting firm ideally wants to hear that you’re excited about working in collaborative teams, whereas academic interviewers may not expect that you will be co-authoring papers with departmental colleagues. I’d recommend doing research about the people you’re interviewing with and having questions for them, as well as prepared responses to questions you know you’re going to get.
Jim: How did you know that this type of job would be a good fit for you?
Charlie (Econ Consulting): I was lucky because I worked at an econ consulting firm as an analyst after I finished my undergraduate degree so I had a good sense of what the job would entail. Ultimately, I liked the collaborative teams econ consulting firms work in, the faster pace of the work environment, and access to data that would be hard to come by working in academia.
Katherine (Medicine): I always knew that I did not want to be in an academic economics department. I like that shorter journal articles in medical or public health outlets are recognized. I also felt comfortable (enough) with the grant-writing expectation and wanted to be in a setting where I could learn from colleagues who were familiar with and successful at grant writing.
Travis (Public Health): I’m interested in research that moves the needle on population health, and I’ve found that these questions often benefit from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Economics gives me a great set of tools, but understanding complex health challenges usually also requires insights from outside the discipline. Some of the most eye-opening moments in my research on the opioid epidemic in the U.S. have come from reading ethnographic research on people’s experiences and from talking with clinicians about what they see in practice. One thing I appreciate about being in a public health department is that this kind of cross-disciplinary engagement happens very naturally. Because I completed a Master’s in Public Health before my PhD, I also had a sense early on that this type of job fit well with my interests and where I want to grow as a researcher.
Ashley (Public Policy): I wanted flexibility in the types of questions I asked, the people I collaborated with, and the journals I published in. My research interests can fit within economics, policy, health services research, and clinical outlets. I felt that I would be more limited in the types of journals that would be supported by my department if I went the economics route.
Is there anything I haven’t asked you that JMCs considering your field should know?
Katherine (Medicine): JMCs should think about how much they enjoy or are willing to write grants and whether the position is funded via hard money (salary guaranteed) or soft money (grant-funded). Clarify whether grants are required and how they factor into evaluation and promotion and ask about typical grant mechanisms (e.g., some assistant professors in my department have NIH K01 awards, while others have other NIH and/or foundation funding). Also ask about resources for grant development (e.g., internal seed funding, pre-award support).
Ashley (Public Policy): Nope!
Travis (Public Health): I would just take the opportunity to encourage more economics JMCs to consider applying to jobs at schools of public health. There are so many pressing challenges in public health that would benefit from greater attention by economists. It is an environment where applying the theoretical and empirical tools of economics can have a large impact, and it can be a very rewarding place to build a career.
Charlie (Econ Consulting): As an American citizen, I am somewhat ignorant of visa sponsorship, etc. If you’re from overseas, I’d recommend doing some research on this topic during your interview process because different firms may have different practices when it comes to visa sponsorship.
Lightning Round Questions
Jim: How does the timing of the job market in your field differ from the econ job market?
Ashley (Public Policy): Relatively similar, but slightly earlier.
Charlie (Econ Consulting): It’s basically the same, but econ consulting firms often have an “early decision” round where 1st round, flyouts, and jobs wrap up in December.
Katherine (Medicine): I found the timing to be similar to econ, though I was on the market during COVID (2021).
Travis (Public Health): There is more heterogeneity. Many public health jobs will move on the same timeline as the econ job market, but some move more quickly as there is not the same level of standardization as in economics.
Do jobs in your field typically show up on the AEA’s Job Openings for Economists (JOE)? If not, where should JMCs be looking for them?
Travis (Public Health): Many positions in schools that are explicitly seeking health economists will appear on the AEA’s JOE listings. I also found several opportunities by searching the Chronicle of Higher Education, job postings from professional organizations such as AcademyHealth, and even browsing the websites of schools or departments I was particularly interested in.
Ashley (Public Policy): I did not spend much time on JOE, but some jobs did show up there. I primarily used publicservicecareers.org.
Charlie (Econ Consulting): All the major firms advertise on JOE.
Katherine (Medicine): JOE, AcademyHealth, ASHEcon, APPAM, and university websites.
How would you compare the tenure expectations and incentives to publish in your field to those in econ?
Katherine (Medicine): There is usually a grant expectation, and the quantity of publications is valued because papers are often shorter and have larger teams. Journal impact factor also matters and publishing outside econ journals is common.
Charlie (Econ Consulting): Some firms have small financial incentives for you to publish in academic journals (i.e., small bonuses). If you aspire to become a “testifying expert” (i.e., someone who actually writes their name on a report, gets deposed, and potentially testifies in court), then having publications on your CV can give you more credibility as an expert and can help with marketing yourself.
Travis (Public Health): The tenure process is quite different because your packet is reviewed by an interdisciplinary committee. These fields tend to publish more frequently, so the pace of output is generally higher than in many economics departments. In practice, that means aiming for a steady stream of publications each year and building a more diverse portfolio that includes shorter, health-focused papers with faster turnaround times alongside any longer-form economics papers that you are working on. Those longer papers still have a place in a tenure portfolio, but you, your chair, and your letter writers often need to do a bit more advocating to articulate their importance, since the time and effort behind them is not always obvious to people outside economics. Another key part of the tenure process is showing a strong trajectory in grant funding, especially through competitive NIH awards.
Ashley (Public Policy): The tenure expectations are much more flexible. As I said earlier, my school is very diverse. Some people publish articles, some books. So, there must be multiple tracks. It is up to us to justify our choices. The incentives to publish are also somewhat different. There is no top-5 rule or expectation. They want us to publish our work in the outlet that is the best fit for the specific project and that gives that project the greatest chance of influencing policy. *The opinions expressed represent only those of the interviewee, and do not represent the views or opinions of Bates White, LLC or of other Bates White employees or affiliates.