NBER profile: Michael Grossman.

• Position: Brief Article - Biography

Michael Grossman is a "child" of the NBER. He has been affiliated with the Bureau since 1966 when Victor Fuchs hired him as a research assistant. Currently, he directs the NBER's Health Economics Program and is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he has taught since 1972. He also is an associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics and the Review of Economics of the Household and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Grossman received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University in 1970. His research has focused on economic models of the determinants of health; the economics of substance use and abuse; and the determinants of interest rates on tax-exempt hospital bonds. His recently completed studies deal with the effects of excise taxes on cigarette smoking by pregnant women, the relationship between substance use and risky sexual behavior by teenagers, the economics of obesity, and the effects of managed care on...