Assoc. Prof. Hannes Schwandt, PhD

Health Economics

Hannes Schwandt is conducting research surrounding the impact of infectious diseases on human capital. Young children get sick frequently and spread disease to other family members. Despite the universality of this experience, there is limited causal evidence on positive or negative consequences of these externalities, especially for younger siblings with developing immune systems and brains. He is also working on research investigating recent mortality trends in the United States. The life expectancy gap between Black and White Americans has strongly declined in recent decades (-50% since 1990) due to life expectancy improvements among Black Americans. At the same time, life expectancy in the United States as a whole is falling behind in comparison to Europe, a development that is observed even when comparing the most affluent areas across countries. While these trends are of vital importance for our societies, the economic, social, and medical factors driving them remain unknown.

Mr. Schwandt is a health economist who studies how economic factors impact physical and mental health and how health shapes human capital and economic productivity. While visiting CES, he will deliver three CES Lectures entitled “Pollution,” “Longevity,” and “Happiness,”

Hannes Schwandt is an Associate Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, Associate Director at the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Before joining Northwestern, He was a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Institute for Policy Research (SIEPR), an Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich, and a post-doctoral research fellow at Princeton University. He received his PhD from Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a BA from the LMU.