Personal page: https://fbokhari.github.io


I am an Associate Professor in the School of Economics and the Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). I am an empirical economist with a strong policy focus.  My research falls into two overlapping areas: (i) industrial organization and competition economics (mostly applied to the health sector. i.e., hospitals, pharmaceuticals, etc. but not exclusively), and (ii) health outcomes and health policies.  The latter also spill into issues of education, gender, and racial equity. 

I am a co-editor at Economic Inquiry where I mostly handle applied papers. I am also the new Data Editor for the journal. Here is a statement by the Editor of the journal (Tim Salmon) about our policies. If you are an academic, I hope his statement gives you a reason to send your next paper to EI.

Some of my recent work in pharmaceuticals focuses on firm strategies and how they impact consumer welfare, firm profits, and growth. I have worked on the valuation/welfare effects of introducing generics and second-generation (`me-too') drugs in a product market, the impact of additional presentations on the growth of a business unit, and now more recently on entry deterring effects of presentation proliferation and of product hopping.  I have also worked on pay-for-delay deals in the European and American legal contexts and the cost of such (anticompetitive) deals. One of the main contributions of this work is the policy simulations that show which legislative changes are likely to make anti-competitive deals not possible and which might make the situation worse.

Concurrently, I am also working on policies to address the rise of antibacterial resistance via managing the demand for broad- vs narrow-spectrum antibiotics.  I also have current work on evaluating alcohol regulations such as a ban on non-linear pricing or establishing price floors to curb excessive alcohol consumption and its heterogenous impact.

I have taught undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. students at UEA and other institutions. The bulk of my teaching has been to economics majors to whom I have taught microeconomics, econometrics, statistics, math methods, industrial organization, and health economics at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.  But I also have significant experience at teaching to non-economists.  I have taught Health Economics and Policy to medical and public health students and Competition Economics and/IO to professionals from regulatory agencies and consulting firms.  Currently, I both teach in and serve as the program co-director for the Postgraduate Certificate in Competition and Regulatory Policy run via CCP at UEA.

I got my Ph.D. in Public Policy and Management from the Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Before joining UEA, I was a Lecturer (Assistant prof) at King’s College London (Department of Primary Care and Public Health Sciences) and before that an Assistant Professor at Florida State University (Department of Economics). I also did a two-year post-doctoral stint at the University of California, Berkeley (School of Public Health).  I got my undergraduate degree from Bard College, NY in physics and economics with a concentration in mathematics.

I am of Pakistani origin (a proud Lahori and an Aitchisonian), have two children and a wife, and four siblings. I try not to tell them too many dad jokes.

Areas of Expertise

Econometric theory, methods, and practice

Microeconometric methods

Identification analysis

Demand analysis

Competition

Regulation

Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals (USA and Europe)