Our impact on policy across the country

In a study that relied on millions of health insurance claims, Professor Zack Cooper, director of the Tobin Center’s Health Care Affordability Lab, and Tobin Center Faculty Affiliate Professor Fiona Scott Morton found that 22% of patients who went to emergency departments within their health insurance networks were treated by an out-of-network doctor—often incurring major, unexpected expenses. The research caught the attention of the press and policymakers, kicking off a years-long debate about how to address “surprise medical bills.”

In the years that followed, Professors Cooper and Scott Morton continued to publish new research on the widespread crisis of surprise medical bills, and Professor Cooper made at least a dozen trips to Washington to meet with policymakers in Congress and at the White House. In December 2020, members of Congress came together across the aisle to pass legislation that protects patients from surprise medical bills for certain medical services, including emergency care.

In moments of crisis or profound change, the institutions we rely on to deliver essential services and support–state and local governments, school systems, or federal agencies to name a few–need urgent, but often nonexistent, evidence to inform their decisions. This was especially true during the Covid-19 pandemic, and remains true today as state and local governments and other institutions adapt to major policy changes at the federal level.

Alongside Professors Chima Ndumele and Jacob Wallace and our partners at the Yale School of Public Health, we built a new way to work within and alongside state agencies to strengthen public health and human services systems while building evidence on what works. By embedding data scientists into Connecticut's Department of Social Services, the Yale research team has been able to help the state navigate and respond to unprecedented changes to Medicaid and SNAP policy enacted in recent federal legislation.

Alongside our partner Child Care Aware–the nation's largest childcare association, we ran the largest-ever occupational-epidemiological study across American preschools and childcare centers and found that children in childcare programs presented no significant risk to adult childcare providers.

Through this important work, we showed that Yale and other universities can serve as dedicated, collaborative partners to governments and other institutions in times of change, instability, or crisis. Alongside our partners, we are ready to listen, learn, and enhance institutional capacity to build and act on evidence.

The world has entered a pivotal moment in the history of global economic cooperation. Since 2018, several rounds of trade wars have created a global trade regime that stands in sharp contrast to the one academics have been studying for the last fifty years. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic and other events have cast increased scrutiny on the resilience of global supply chains.

Research by Tobin Center Faculty Affiliate Amit Khandelwal provided policymakers with vital evidence on how the 2018 and 2025 trade wars affected U.S. consumers, as well as high-quality estimates of the potential cost to U.S. consumers of ending a provision of U.S trade law that allowed low-cost goods to enter the country duty-free. Meanwhile, Tobin Center Faculty Affiliate Aleh Tsyvinski launched a novel tool for monitoring supply chain disruptions, helping companies and governments detect abnormalities in the flows of critical products and materials.

As we enter uncharted territory on international trade, policymakers, business owners, consumers, and journalists need reliable data and evidence on how changes in global trade policy are affecting communities throughout the U.S. Faculty Affiliate Amit Khandelwal’s research on the short-run economic impacts of the 2025 Tariffs is being read, discussed, and considered across domestic and international policy contexts. It was cited by the Congressional Budget Office in written responses to the Senate Finance Committee, referenced by the Governor of the Bank of Italy, shared with the acting Chief Economic Advisor at the White House, and drew a response from a senior White House official.