Matthew Basilico

I am a physician-economist interested in the neurobiological underpinnings (“neuro-microfoundations”) of economic and health inequality. My PhD dissertation, guided by David Cutler, Nathan Nunn and David Laibson, examined the impact of post-discharge surgical prescribing on long-term opioid use through an instrumental variables technique. I have served on faculty of Harvard Medical School, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, and the Harvard Department of Economics, where I teach The Economics of Development and Global Health. Clinically, I am interested in severe mood disorders and suicidality, as well as in traumatic and psychotic pathologies and their links to chronic homelessness. I completed an intern year in General Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital before moving to Psychiatry Residency. My work has been published in the Journal of Economic Literature, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Orthopedic Trauma. I previously served as a Consultant to the President of the World Bank under Jim Kim, as a Fulbright fellow in Malawi, and a co-editor of the textbook “Reimagining Global Health” (University of California Press, 2013) with Paul Farmer, Jim Kim and Arthur Kleinman.