Expertise

Topics:  Public Policy, Industrial Organization, Business and Economics, Health Economics, Antitrust

Industries: Writing and Editing, Public Policy, Education/Learning, Research

Martin Gaynor is the E.J. Barone University Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and former Director of the Bureau of Economics at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Professor Gaynor's research focuses on competition and incentives in health care, and on antitrust policy.

He is one of the founders of the Health Care Cost Institute, an independent non-partisan nonprofit dedicated to advancing knowledge about U.S. health care spending, and served as the first Chair of its governing board. He is also an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an International Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon Dr. Gaynor held faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins and a number of other universities. He has been an invited visitor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Northwestern University, and the Toulouse School of Economics.

His research focuses on competition and antitrust policy, particularly in health care markets. He has written extensively on this topic, testified before Congress, and advised the governments of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and South Africa on competition issues in health care. Gaynor is on the Pennsylvania Governor’s Health Advisory Board and co-chaired the state’s workgroup on shoppable care. He has won a number of awards for his research, including the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy Best Paper Award, the Victor R. Fuchs Research Award, the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation Health Care Research Award, the Kenneth J. Arrow Award, the Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship (finalist), and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. Dr. Gaynor received his B.A. from the University of California, San Diego in 1977 and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1983.

Media Experience

Farzad Mostashari, Aledade, on the power of primary care  — Medium
Farzad also spoke to the importance of independent providers adding competition to healthcare markets, the idea being that independent providers joining larger health systems will reduce competition and raise prices, and said that physicians have drifted towards joining larger physician groups rather than hospitals or health systems. Alongside health economists Martin Gaynor and Paul Ginsburg, Farzad published a series of recommendations and Forbes op-ed detailing policy changes that would improve competition in the healthcare industry.

Hospitals embrace mergers as path to survival  — Trib Total Media
Those concerns were expressed in a 2021 statement from Martin Gaynor, professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights.

How COVID-19 Changed Hospital Care  — Money.com
The industry was already trending this way, according to testimony from Martin Gaynor, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, at a congressional hearing last May. There have been more than 450 hospital mergers in the last decade, according to Gaynor.

How Effective Is the Government’s Campaign Against Hospital Mergers?  — ProPublica
Employees’ health care costs are also rising rapidly, a trend expected to continue in 2023. “Workers’ contribution to family health insurance premiums grew 259 percent from 1998 to 2018, while nominal average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers grew by only 68 percent,” according to a 2020 paper by economist Martin Gaynor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a founder of the Health Care Cost Institute.

When Hospitals Buy Doctor Practices, Do Prices Always Rise?  — Bloomberg
What happens when physicians are employed by hospitals, rather than working independently? Over the past decade, the share of doctors practicing on their own has declined markedly. Many antitrust advocates are concerned that nothing good will happen as a result, and the Federal Trade Commission is studying the situation. But new research suggests that the shift may bring more benefits than expected, at least for specialist doctors.