Christopher Whaley

Christopher Whaley is an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. His research focuses on using large-scale medical claims data to examine 1) How information and financial incentives influence patient's choice of providers and the associated quality effects of provider choice, 2) How providers respond to changes in consumer incentives, and 3) What explains heterogeneous responses to cost and information programs across diverse patient populations? His research has been published in a variety of clinical, health policy, and economics journals. He is the lead author of a JAMA paper that examines the effects of online price transparency information. This paper was a finalist for the 2015 National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation Annual Health Care Research Award. He also received the 2015 AHRQ Research Conference Director's Award for a paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine that examines the effect of reference pricing on consumer choice of providers for colonoscopy services. Whaley received a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in health economics from the University of California, Berkeley.