Finkelstein studied government at Harvard University, where she was a Truman Scholar and received an ABsumma cum laude in 1995. At Harvard, her interest in economics was inspired in part by taking economist Lawrence Katz's course "Social Problems in the American Economy". She was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University, where she received an M.Phil. in economics in 1997. She received her PhD in economics from MIT in 2001 under supervision of James M. Poterba and Jonathan Gruber.
Career
Finkelstein was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows for three years, after which she joined the MIT faculty in 2005 and received tenure within three years. In 2016, MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences named Finkelstein the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor for a five-year term. The professorship was established with a gift by Edmund MacDonald, and recognizes Finkelstein's outstanding achievements in the field of economics.
Research
Finkelstein's primary expertise is in public finance and health economics, focusing particularly on health insurance. She conducts research into market failures and government intervention in insurance markets, and the impact of public policy on health care and health insurance. Together with Katherine Baicker, she is one of two principal investigators of the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, a randomized evaluation of the impact of expanding Medicaid to low-income adults. Her research has shown that newly enrolled Medicaid patients make more trips overall to providers after acquiring insurance, make more visits to emergency rooms, and benefit financially from having insurance, among other findings. Finkelstein said that the body of research, including her work on the effects of the 2008 Medicaid expansion in Oregon, have made her confident that health insurance improves health.
Awards
In 2008, Finkelstein was awarded the Elaine Bennett Research Prize by the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, for her contributions to the economics profession. In 2012, she was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association. The award cited her research as "a model of how theory and empirics can be combined in creative ways".
