HIM / Biotech Alumni Newsletter

Faculty Profile: Leemore Dafny, PhD

Leemore Dafny joined the Kellogg faculty in 2002 as an Assistant Professor of Management and Strategy. In addition to her position at Kellogg, Dafny is also a Faculty Research Fellow for the Program on Aging at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern.

Leemore Dafny, Assistant Professor of Management & Strategy at Kellogg.

Dafny grew up in Houston, TX with her two sisters and parents. After graduating from Bellaire High School in Houston, she left for New England to continue her educational journey at Harvard University. Dafny decided to study economics at the school during her first year of classes. “My introductory economics course was the course that made the most sense to me,” said Dafny, who graduated summa cum laude in 1995. “Economics provided a new way to look at the world, and I enjoyed the mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis.” While an undergraduate, she was advised by Martin Feldstein, a former head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

After Harvard, Dafny stayed on the East Coast and joined the working ranks as a business analyst for McKinsey and Company in Washington D.C. During her tenure, she worked with several clients in the healthcare sector, including a leading health insurance company and a medical device manufacturer. “The output of the healthcare sector is like no other. This feature, together with the interplay between public and private agents, produces fascinating economics questions,” said Dafny. She also worked for a year at the McKinsey Global Institute, an economics think tank in the nation’s capital.

In 1997, she returned to Cambridge, MA to pursue her Ph.D. at MIT. Her research focused on the industrial organization of healthcare, specifically concerning how market forces shape the field. While at MIT, Dafny’s research was supported through fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, and NBER.

After receiving her Ph.D. in Economics in 2001 with a dissertation entitled “The Impact of Market Forces and Public Health Insurance on Inpatient Care,” Dafny remained at NBER as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Health and Aging Economics before coming to Kellogg. She decided to join Kellogg “because of its excellent environment for work in industrial organization and health economics.”

At Kellogg, Dafny teaches the core introductory strategy class, “Business Strategy.” Her current research concerns whether hospitals respond in profit-maximizing ways to DRG price changes. She has also received a Searle grant with Professor David Dranove to conduct research on Medicare HMOs.

When she isn’t researching or teaching, Dafny enjoys traveling, hiking, and reading fiction. She is also an avid runner and recently completed the Chicago Marathon. Her husband, Nathaniel Harrison, holds an MBA from Sloan at MIT and works in renewable energy technology.