Curriculum Vitae

Placement Director: Neil Wallace
    (814) 863-3805
    neilw@psu.edu

Contact Information:
Andrew B. Rice
  Office: (814) 865-1108
  Home: (814) 876-4658
E-mail: arice@psu.edu
Website: http://www.econ.psu.edu/~abr127/

CITIZENSHIP:

• United States

EDUCATION:

• Ph.D. Economics, Penn State University (Expected June 2010)
• B.S. Economics, The Pennsylvania State University, 2003
• Diploma, North Crowley High School, Fort Worth, TX, 1999

PH.D. THESIS:

• “Essays in Applied Microeconometrics”
  Thesis Advisor:  Edward J. Green

FIELDS:

• Primary: Applied Microeconometrics
• Secondary: Health, Labor, Political Economy,  Economic Demography, Computational Methods

PAPERS:

• Uncovering the Causal Pathways Between Education Investment and Reduced Mortality (Job Market Paper)
• S. Bade and A. Rice, Political Advocacy with Collective Decision Making. Mimeo 2009.

GRANTS & FELLOWSHIPS:

• Fall 2008 Liberal Arts Dissertation Fellowship
• 2008 Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award
• 2007-2008 Bates White Graduate Fellowship
• 2006 Penn State College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Teaching Award for Graduate Students.
• Penn State Department of Economics Outstanding Teacher Award for Spring, Summer, and Fall 2006.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

• Instructor, Econometrics (~25 students), The Pennsylvania State University, Summer 2009.
•  Instructor, Principles of Microeconomics (~ 375 students), The Pennsylvania State University, Spring 2007.
•  Instructor, Current Issues (Senior Writing Intensive, (~40 students), The Pennsylvania State University, Summer and Fall 2006.
• Instructor, Intro to Micro/Macro Economics (~75 students), The Pennsylvania State University, Spring 2006.
• Teaching Assistant, Principles of Microeconomics (~1000 students per semester), The Pennsylvania State University, Fall 2004, Spring, Summer, and Fall 2005.

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE:

• Research Assistant for Edward Green; Department of Economics, Penn State University; Summer 2008, Fall 2009
• Research Assistant for Robert Marshall; Department of Economics, Penn State University; Spring 2009

CONSULTING EXPERIENCE:

• Bates White Summer Fellow: worked on a large international anti-trust civil lawsuit with a team to establish liability using modern economic techniques.

PRESENTATIONS & OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

• Attended “A Course in Applied Microeconometrics” by Imbens and Wooldridge.  Institute for Research on Poverty, Madison, WI, Summer 2008.
• Pre-Electoral Debate: The Case of a Large Election.  The 18th Stony Brook Game Theory Festival of the Game Theory Society, Stony Brook, 2007.
•  Pre-Electoral Debate: The Case of a Large Election.  Cornell-PSU Macro Workshop. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 6 April 2007.
• Making Penn State's Most Enrolled-In Class More Welcoming.  Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 8 April 2006.

• Proficient in Parallel C, C++, Stata, Matlab

REFERENCES:

• Prof. Edward Green,  415 Kern Graduate Bldg, University Park, PA 16802
  Tel: 1-814-865-8493; E-mail: edgreen@psu.edu       

•  Prof. Edward Coulson, 508 Kern Graduate Bldg., University Park, PA 16802
  Tel: 1-814-863-0625; E-mail: fyj@psu.edu

• Prof. Joris Pinkse, 616 Kern Graduate Bldg., University Park, PA 16802
  Tel: 1-814-863-0508; E-mail: joris@psu.edu

• Prof. Duane F. Alwin, 326 Pond Lab, University Park, PA 16802.
  Tel: 1-814-863-0438; E-mail: dalwin@pop.psu.edu

THESIS ABSTRACT

It is well known that there is a strong positive relationship between better health outcomes and higher educational attainment. As a rule of thumb; one extra year of education is associated with an extra one and a half years of life.  Two main theories about this association are discussed in the literature: that education improves longevity through some unknown mechanism; or that there is a selection bias due to unobserved heterogeneity.  One common example used to support the selection bias theory is that patient people may be willing to invest in more education and better health behaviors when young since these individuals have not heavily discounted the benefits when old.  Likewise; impatient people care little about the future and therefore choose not to invest in education and health behavior. 

The distinction has important policy ramifications: if the selection bias theory explains most of the association, simply encouraging education may not generate a strong health behavior response.  Fortunately recent research has taken advantage of natural experiments to suggest that unobserved heterogeneity does not fully explain why health and education are so strongly related.   To the extent that both theories explain some part of the association, it is currently unknown which is dominant and how they interact with each other.  

I use the Health and Retirement Study data from 1992-2006 to structurally estimate a dynamic model of health and education choice allowing for permanent unobserved heterogeneity in preferences.  This is the first attempt to tie detailed micro data to an economic model in order to examine the effects of education on health behavior.  Results suggest that while there is considerable heterogeneity in the HRS sample; controlling for it does not diminish the direct health returns to education. However the model suggests that there is significant selection into low education and detrimental health behaviors based upon preference heterogeneity. The model predicts an average gain of only one third of a year after an exogenous shift of one year of education which is substantially lower than the typical rule of thumb result of one and a half years that previous studies have reported.