Michael Darden

Assistant Professor

Ph.D. University of North Carolina

B.A. North Carolina State University

Research interests: health economics, applied microeconometrics

mdarden1@tulane.edu

Website

Vitae

Short bio

Darden's research interests lie broadly in applied microeconomics and specifically in the economics of health and information. His current work can be divided along two main paths. First, his research explores individual decision making in the context of health and health care markets. Darden is interested in the dynamics of health decisions over time and the roles that information asymmetries may play in such decisions. He is currently studying how the receipt of information, health-related or otherwise, and the resolution or lessening of uncertainty may influence smoking behavior. The second path of his research focuses on empirical methodology. He is interested in the estimation of dynamic discrete choice models that are derived from theoretical models of choice. Additionally, in both a structural and reduced-form sense, Darden studies the modeling of unobserved heterogeneity in micro-econometric models. He is specifically interested in the application of less-parametric models of unobserved heterogeneity such as the discrete factor method for random effects.

Darden has presented at several conferences, including the Seventh Annual International Health Economics Association's World Congress in Beijing, China, the Second Annual Health Econometrics Workshop at the University of Michigan, and the Triangle Health Economic Workshop at Duke University. Darden received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011.