Tracy A Falba, Visiting Assistant Professor

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.”

Contact Info:

Office Location:	208 Social Sciences
Office Phone:	(919) 660-1806
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2012):  (typical courses)

• ECON 438.01, PUBLIC FINANCE Synopsis

  Social Sciences 311, TuTh 01:25 PM-02:40 PM

  (also cross-listed as PUBPOL 289.01)

Education:

PhD	Stanford University	2000
BS	University of California at San Diego	1993

Specialties:

Health Economics
Public Finance

Research Interests: Retirement Behavior and Well-Being, Economics of Addiction, Health Behaviors

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.

Keywords:

Economics • Smoking • Health Economics • Addiction • Public Finance • Health Behavior • flu • cholesterol • depression • alcohol

Curriculum Vitae

Working Papers   (More Publications)

1. Susan H. Busch and Mireia Jofre-Bonet and Tracy A. Falba and Jody L. Sindelar, Tobacco Spending and its Crowd-Out of Other Goods no. 10974 (December, 2004) [html]

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. T. A. Falba and J. L. Sindelar, Spousal concordance in health behavior change, Health Services Research, vol. 43 no. 1 (2008), pp. 96-116, ISSN 0017-9124 [Download pdf] [abs] [health, retirement, smoking]
2. T. Falba and H. M. Teng and J. L. Sindelar and W. T. Gallo, The effect of involuntary job loss on smoking intensity and relapse, Addiction, vol. 100 no. 9 (2005), pp. 1330-1339, ISBN 0965-2140
3. J. L. Sindelar and N. Duchovny and T. A. Falba and S. H. Busch, If smoking increases absences, does quitting reduce them?, Tobacco Control, vol. 14 no. 2 (2005), pp. 99-105, ISBN 0964-4563
4. M. Jofre-Bonet and S. H. Busch and T. A. Falba and J. L. Sindelar, Poor mental health and smoking: Interactive impact on wages, Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics, vol. 8 no. 4 (2005), pp. 193-203, ISBN 1091-4358
5. T. Falba, Health events and the smoking cessation of middle aged Americans, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, vol. 28 no. 1 (2005), pp. 21-33, ISBN 0160-7715
6. S. H. Busch and M. Jofre-Bonet and T. A. Falba and J. L. Sindelar, Burning a hole in the budget: tobacco spending and its crowd-out of other goods, Appl Health Econ Health Policy, vol. 3 no. 4 (2004), pp. 263-72
7. A. Snyder and T. Falba and S. Busch and J. Sindelar, Are State legislatures responding to public opinion when allocating funds for tobacco control programs?, Health Promot Pract, vol. 5 no. 3 Suppl (2004), pp. 35S-45S [health, smoking]
8. Author's  [author's comments]

Publication Listing