Austina Xu
Austina Xu is pursuing a B.A. in Economics and English at Williams College. Her research interests lie in applied microeconomics and econometrics, with a focus on how family structures, education access, and healthcare systems shape economic outcomes across the life course, particularly in the context of aging populations and intergenerational inequality.
As a 2025 SUMR scholar, Xu is working on two projects focused on healthcare policy and prescribing behavior. With Professor Alon Bergman, she is contributing to a study on the causal effects of pharmaceutical detailing—promotional payments made by drug companies—on physician prescribing patterns. The project uses Medicare and Open Payments data and leverages natural experiments from pharmaceutical acquisitions. She is helping with data analysis, literature review, and synthesis of prescribing trends across drug classes.
Her second project, with Professor Abby Alpert, examines the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on drug pricing and Medicare spending. The study investigates how recent policy changes influence market dynamics, medication access, and patient costs. Xu is supporting this work through literature synthesis, data organization, and preparing summaries of the IRA’s anticipated and observed impacts.
Last summer, Xu worked as a research assistant at the Wharton School’s Behavior Change for Good Initiative under Professors Angela Duckworth and Katy Milkman, contributing to a study aimed at improving first-year academic performance at institutions with historically high attrition rates. Previously, she also presented research at the Society for Research in Child Development Biennial Meeting. At Williams, she works as a teaching assistant in the Economics and Statistics departments, gives campus tours, consults for local nonprofits through her school’s pro bono consulting group, and dances with the college’s hip-hop dance team. Recently, Xu was selected to participate in the Williams-Exeter Programme (WEPO), where she hopes to further explore the intersection of economic policy and social outcomes through coursework in law and economics at Oxford University’s Exeter College.