Lan Zou

Lan is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Health Care Policy, advised by Tim Layton.

Her research interests lie in the intersection of health economics and insurance markets, with a focus on the Swiss mandatory health insurance market. Decision-making in health insurance often diverges from conventional rationality, influenced by various factors. Her work spans from applying behavioral models using field data, enhancing decision-making in experiments, to studying the effects of premium subsidies on low-income individuals.

The Swiss health insurance system has a particular setting; far from being just a unique context, it is rather an ideal laboratory to juxtapose and analyze health issues against the backdrop of other global health insurance mechanisms. Its high regulation, while confining, intriguingly narrows down consumer decisions to insurance coverage levels, presenting an almost pristine setting for dissecting key issues in health insurance economics. She collaborates with the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health on the health insurance issues and has access to the Swiss administrative data covering the entire Swiss population.