Research and Teaching Interests

With a Juris Doctor and Doctorate in Business and Public Policy, Brian Chen conducts program evaluations that lie at the intersection of health law and health economics. Specifically, his research centers on the economic evaluation of legal, policy, and programmatic interventions to reduce the burden of lifestyle-related chronic illnesses due to obesity, smoking, or addiction. Chen is particularly interested in assessing the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and unintended consequences of programs and policies that address two major root causes of many lifestyle-related chronic diseases – physical inactivity and mental health disorders. He is also very interested in using traditional and behavioral economic theory to assess the effectiveness of state and federal policies and laws that regulate the treatment of these chronic diseases. Chen draws primarily from the modern econometric toolkit to conduct his analyses but have also drawn from simulation modeling and decision analyses in his work.