Gopi Shah Goda is a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Associate Professor of Health Policy (by courtesy) and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries. From July 2021 to July 2022, Gopi served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and she currently serves on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Council of Economic Advisors. She also served as SIEPR's Deputy Director from September 2016 to July 2021.
Gopi conducts research that informs how policy can best serve aging populations. She studies the sustainability of public programs serving the elderly, and how individuals make healthcare, saving and retirement decisions as they age. Her recent research examines the implications of subsidizing medical spending through the tax code, and how COVID-19 illness affects U.S. workers. Her work has appeared in a variety of leading economics journals, and has been supported by the Social Security Administration, the National Institutes on Aging, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the TIAA Institute.
Gopi is passionate about bridging the gap between research and practice to ensure that scholarship culminates in evidence-based solutions to pressing social problems. Her work has garnered coverage in major media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the Guardian, and the San Francisco Chronicle. It has also frequently been cited in policy discourse, including government reports, agency rulemaking, and legislative bodies. She is a founding member of Briefing Book, a collaboration among economists with research and policy experience that aims to help its readers develop informed views about economic policy issues, and her work has been published by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. Through her teaching, Gopi aims to train the next generation of economic policy experts and scholars to interpret and critically evaluate research findings, understand their policy implications, perform empirical analysis, and communicate economic ideas clearly and effectively.
Prior to joining SIEPR in 2009, Gopi was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at Harvard University. She earned her PhD in economics from Stanford University in 2007 and her B.S. in mathematics and actuarial science from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln in 2000.