Insurance (Business) & Economics—Joint Degree
About the PhD Program
The Insurance Economics and Actuarial Analytics (Business) and Economics joint degree trains researchers for tenure-track positions at the nexus of insurance and economics. Specializing in this area will provide you with the opportunity to expand your academic career path to both fields at top universities.
The program stresses high-quality research with a focus on developing the core basics of economics before specializing in risk and insurance. Students in the joint program are required to take a common curriculum and to meet all requirements of both the economics and insurance economics and actuarial analytics PhD programs.
Our faculty members contribute to significant advancements in these fields, as evidenced by our recently published journal articles.
Core areas of research
Our faculty have specific expertise in:
- Microinsurance
- Insurance regulation
- Financial management of insurance organizations
- Corporate risk management
- Behavioral economics
- Predictive modeling
- Health care analytics
- Health services management
- Statistical methods development
Academic Requirements
All students must meet the general PhD requirements of the Wisconsin School of Business, the UW–Madison Graduate School, and the Department of Economics. Applicants to the program should have the following:
- A strong mathematics and statistics background. Students generally have completed three semesters of calculus and linear algebra at a minimum for mathematics. For statistics training, prior coursework has covered applied regression models in statistics and/or econometrics.
- A background in some combination of economics, finance, insurance, actuarial science, and statistics.
Program Coursework
Students in the joint PhD program are required to take a common curriculum and meet all requirements in both the economics and insurance economics and actuarial analytics PhD programs. The course sequence for PhD students in insurance economics and actuarial analytics is customized to fit each student’s unique research interests and background.
Year 1
- Economics core: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics
Summer
- Economics micro and macro comprehensive exams
Year 2
- Two courses to complete their primary economics field
- Three other classes in economics
- Presentation of preliminary research in economics under supervision of faculty in both departments
Years 2 and 3
- Two courses in economics to meet the economics minor requirement
- Required courses in the insurance economics and actuarial analytics program (Because risk and insurance department courses are offered every two years, the order of the coursework depends on the time of the offering.)
Year 3—Summer
- Insurance economics and actuarial analytics comprehensive exam containing a written and oral portion
Advancement to dissertator status— requirements
- Successful completion of economics micro and macro comprehensive exams
- Successful completion of a sole-authored paper
- Successful completion of risk and insurance comprehensive exams
Milestone requirements
Each milestone requirement—field paper, three-signature proposal, and dissertation committee—must include at least one faculty member from both the economics and risk and insurance departments. A single dissertation, approved by faculty in both departments, is sufficient to fulfill the dissertation requirement.
Faculty Research Interests
Daniel Bauer
Research interests:
- Risk evaluation
- Quantitative finance
- Risk management
- Insurance economics
Stuart Craig
Research interests:
- Industrial organization of health care and health insurance markets
- Employer-sponsored health insurance
- Business-to-business price setting
- Applied econometrics
Tyler Leverty
Research interests:
- Economics of insurance markets
- Insurance company operations
- Insurance regulation
- Public policy issues in insurance
Anita Mukherjee
Research interests:
- Insurance markets
- Development economics
- Law and economics
- Psychology and economics
Philip Mulder
Research interests:
- Climate finance
- Disaster insurance
- Real estate and household finance
Marjorie Rosenberg
Research interests:
- Applications of statistics and actuarial science
- Bayesian methodology related to health insurance
Peng Shi
Research interests:
- Predictive modeling
- Multivariate regression models
- Longitudinal/panel data
- Asymmetric information in insurance
Dan Sacks
Research interests:
- Social insurance, including Social Security and the Affordable Care Act
- Health insurance, moral hazard, and adverse selection
- Applied econometrics
- Industrial organization
Justin Sydnor
Research interests:
- Psychology and economics
- Applied microeconomics
- Behavioral industrial organization
- Insurance markets
- Decision-making under risk
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