Stephanie Khoury, Ph.D.
Economist
Stephanie Khoury is an Economist at Intensity, LLC with expertise in applied microeconomics, statistical analysis, labor economics, and large dataset analysis.
Dr. Khoury has significant experience in analyzing large microeconomics datasets to generate profound conclusions. For example, two of her papers challenge the effectiveness of state and federal health policies using vast administrative data. The first paper focused on changes in mandatory vaccination policies in California for school-aged children using school-level data over several years surrounding two main policy changes, which first aimed to limit and later fully eliminated non-medical vaccine exemptions. Dr. Khoury examined how vaccination rates, medical exemption rates, and county-level outbreak rates responded to these two policies. Interestingly, she found that schools with high baseline rates of non-medical exemptions had significantly higher rates of medical exemptions after the second policy change, indicating a potential substitution effect that could contribute to a lower than optimal population vaccination rate. In the second paper, Dr. Khoury studied a federal bonus payment program designed to incentivize primary care physicians to move to areas designated as having health provider shortages. She wanted to determine whether the policy is effective in bringing any primary care physicians to the shortage areas and to identify what kinds of physicians may be more likely to respond to the policy. Dr. Khoury found suggestive evidence that the policy was effective in increasing the number of early-career physicians in the shortage areas, and that this increase was driven entirely by those who graduated from ranked medical schools.
Prior to Intensity, Dr. Khoury worked at an economics consulting firm as an Associate Economist, where she built and analyzed large databases to create statistical analyses and damages estimates for class-action lawsuits and audits related to alleged discrimination and wage and hour disputes.
Dr. Khoury earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, where she specialized in Applied Microeconomics, Health Economics, Public Economics, and Labor Economics. Dr. Khoury also served as a research and teaching assistant in the department of economics.
Dr. Khoury earned her B.S. in Economics (Magna Cum Laude) from Loyola Marymount University (Honors Program).