Dr. Emily Oster

April 5, 2016 ; 6:00 pm

Dr. Emily Oster is an associate professor of economics at Brown University and the author of “Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong — and What You Really Need to Know.” Her research focuses on health and development economics. Her past work has covered issues of HIV and gender equality in health and survival. Her current work focuses on how individuals seek out, and react to, health information. She has several recent papers on Huntington Disease, a degenerative neurological disorder. In this context she explores health information-seeking and asks why individuals in the at-risk population seem resistant to informative genetic information about this disease. She uses a similar population to test whether knowledge of limited life expectancy affects incentives to invest in education and job training. For more information visit http://watson.brown.edu/people/faculty/oster