ABOUT
Lee Lockwood is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia Department of Economics and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His main research fields are public finance and labor economics, with a special interest in the effects of government social insurance programs on behavior and welfare.
Professor Lockwood holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics, and a BS in industrial engineering and economics from Northwestern University. He was previously an assistant professor of economics at Northwestern and a postdoctoral fellow in health and aging at the NBER. Lockwood was awarded the 2019 TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security.
CURRICULUM VITAE
RESEARCH
Published and Forthcoming Articles
Targeting with In-Kind Transfers: Evidence from Medicaid Home Care
April 2019 (with Ethan Lieber)
American Economic Review, 109(4): 1461-1485.
Online appendix. NBER working paper #24267
Featured by the American Economic Association.
Incidental Bequests and the Choice to Self-Insure Late-Life Risks
September 2018
American Economic Review, 108(9): 2513-2550.
Online appendix. NBER working paper #20745
Winner of the 2019 TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award.
Government Old-Age Support and Labor Supply: Evidence from the Old Age Assistance Program
August 2018 (with Daniel Fetter)
American Economic Review, 108(8): 2174-2211.
Online appendix. NBER working paper #22132
Featured in the NBER Digest, in the NBER Reporter,
as the AEA Chart of the Week, and by the Institute for Policy Research
Bequest Motives and the Annuity Puzzle
April 2012
Review of Economic Dynamics, 15(2): 226-243.
Other Publications
Perspective piece on “One size fits all? Drawdown structures in Australia and The Netherlands,” by Jennifer Alonso García and Michael Sherris.
November 2018
The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 2018.
Geographic Variation in Health Care: The Role of Private Markets.
Spring 2010 (with Tomas Philipson, Seth Seabury, Darius Lakdawalla, and Dana Goldman)
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 325-361.
Working Papers
Beyond Health: Non-Health Risk and the Value of Disability Insurance
(with Manasi Deshpande; draft under SSA review but available upon request)
Abstract: The public debate over disability insurance (DI) has centered on concerns about individuals with less-severe health conditions receiving benefits. We go beyond health risk alone to quantify DI's overall insurance value, including value from insuring non-health risk. We find that DI recipients, especially those with less-severe health conditions, are much more likely to have experienced a wide variety of non-health shocks than non-recipients. Selection into DI on the basis of non-health shocks is so strong among individuals with less-severe health conditions that by many measures less-severe DI recipients are worse off than severe DI recipients. As a result, under baseline assumptions, DI benefits to less-severe recipients have an annual value (insurance benefit less efficiency cost) of $7,700 per recipient, about three-fourths that of DI benefits to severe recipients ($9,900). Insurance against non-health risk accounts for about one-half of DI's value.
Selected Work in Progress
Health Insurance Targeting
The Riskiness of Owning Versus Renting Housing
(with Scott Baker, Lorenz Kueng, and Pinchuan Ong)
The Intergenerational Incidence of Government Old-Age Support: Evidence from the Early Social Security Era
(with Daniel Fetter and Paul Mohnen)
TEACHING
Faculty Honor Roll, Northwestern Associated Student Government, 2015
ECON 4310 Economics of the Public Sector (advanced undergraduate)
ECON 8320 Public Economics II (graduate)