Tracy A. Falba is a visiting assistant professor for the economics department at Duke University. She joined Duke in 2006 and simultaneously acquired the position of research scholar at the Center for Health Policy within the university. She is also a faculty member at the Yale School of Medicine’s Stress, Self-Control & Addiction Consortium. Prior to gaining these positions, Professor Falba was an associate research scientist for the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale University School of Medicine from 2000-2006. While at Yale, she also gave lectures for the university’s Economics Department.
Professor Falba earned her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2000. She received much recognition for her achievements as a scholar, achieving such honors as the Agency for Health Care Policy Research Pre-doctoral Training Fellow in 1998-1999, the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow in Economics for 1994-1998, the Best Pre-doctoral Paper Award from the Stanford University Economics Department in 1996, and others.
Professor Falba’s standard of excellence as a student carried over into her career as an educator. Her teaching extends beyond the classroom as Professor Falba brings her knowledge to meetings and conferences around the world. She has presented to IHEA in Barcelona, ICMPE Financing Mental and Addictive Disorders in Venice, and to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has also traveled around the U.S. to share her insights, giving various talks with such titles as, “Identifying Peer Effects in Substance Abuse,” “Willingness to Pay for Smoking Cessation Treatments,” and “Smoking, Quitting, and Productivity.”
| Office Location: | 208 Social Sciences |
| Office Phone: | (919) 660-1806 |
| Email Address: | |
Teaching (Fall 2012): (typical courses)
| PhD | Stanford University | 2000 |
| BS | University of California at San Diego | 1993 |
Professor Falba focuses her research on the economics of addition, retirement behavior and well-being, and general health behaviors. Her studies have explored such variables as smoking, depression, alcoholism, cholesterol, the flu, and public finance. Many of her latest studies explore factors that influence tobacco addiction, which have appeared in a number of the leading academic journals. Titles of her more recent published papers include, “The Persistence of Depressive Symptoms in Older Workers Who Experience Involuntary Job Loss: Findings from the Health and Retirement Survey” with William T. Gallo, Elizabeth H. Bradley, Joel Dubin, Laura Cramer, Stanislv Kasl, and Richard N. Jones; “Poor Mental Health and Smoking: Interactive Impact on Wages” with Mireia Jofre-Bonet, Susan H. Busch, and Jody L. Sindelar; “Securitization of tobacco settlement payments to reduce states’ conflict of interest” with Jody L. Sindelar; and others. Professor Falba recently received a grant from NIH/NIA to conduct research on health habits in relation to aging. Before beginning her career as a professor and independent researcher, she was a pre-doctoral training fellow for the Agency for Health Care Policy Research.