Professor Joan Costa-Font (he/him) works as a Professor of Health Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he is one of the coordinators of the Ageing@LSE group. He is a faculty associate of LSE Health and the International Inequalities Institute, where he leads the Ageing and Health Incentives Lab (AHIL) and co-leads the perceptions of inequality program respectively. He is affiliated with the two major global economics research networks, namely IZA, and CESifo.
Joan is a highly cited health economist with extensive contributions to the field, having authored over 100 articles in leading academic journals. His research primarily focuses on healthy ageing and inequality broadly defined, and he is interested in questions at the borders of health economics, behavioural economics, and political economy. His work is widely published across key journals in health economics (e.g., Journal of Health Economics), behavioral economics (e.g., Journal of Risk and Uncertainty), and political economy, as well as in prominent mainstream economics journals (e.g., Journal of the European Economic Association) and interdisciplinary publications in science and medicine (e.g., PNAS).He has authored and edited books for both Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. His recent titles include "The Political Economy of Health and Health Care: The Rise of the Patient Citizen” (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and "Behavioural Incentive Design for Health Policy: Steering for Health" (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Professor Costa-Font has helped edit several journals on behavioural economics, public policy, and applied economics and currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Economics of Ageing and the Evaluation Review.
Joan’s current research spans across fields and has an interdisciplinary and an international focus. Currently, his projects aim at advancing our knowledge of both the political economy and behavioural economics of health and aging. Joan supervises students on a range of topics, including:
- Healthy aging, and the household and well-being effects of health and caregiving arrangements
- The political and behavioural drivers of health inequality
- The social and financial incentives for healthy habits
- Behavioural economics and political economy of time use
He has earned three undergraduate degrees in different social sciences (BSc, Licenciado in economics, law, and political science & sociology), holds an MA in Economics (UPF), an MPhil in International Economic Law (UB), and an MSc (Econ) in International Health Policy (LSE, with distinction & best student prize), alongside a PhD in Economics (UB), and a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (LSE). He has been a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University (2012) and a long-standing Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton University (2024), Sciences Po (2022) Oxford University (2009), and the CES in Munich (2008). He has also held visiting professorships at Columbia University, Boston College, UCL, IZA, Paris Dauphine University, and has taught at Università Cattolica and the University of Barcelona.
Joan has extensive experience as a consultant for numerous national and international organizations, such as the House of Lords, NIHR, Public Health England, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Health Organization. In addition to serving as the principal investigator on multiple research projects, he is a member of the Scientific Committee of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Economics for Environment, Climate Change, and Health (WHO TAG-EconECH). Joan has also authored numerous reports for global organizations, including the 2023 WHO Global Report on LTC Financing. Currently, he leads the LSE-Vitality partnership program , "Behavioral Incentives for Long-Term Health."
CV
Joan is currently on sabbatical during academic year 2024/25.
Teaching
Programme Director, MSc International Health Policy
Co-Director Executive Program Health Economics, Policy and Management
HP429 Behavioral Incentives in Health and Health Care
HP426 Applied Health Econometrics
HP433 Health Care Regulation
HP4D6E Behavioural Insights for Health Incentive Design
HP500 Advanced Health Policy and Economics
Affiliations
Fellow, CESifo Munich
Fellow, IZA Bonn
Affiliate, Medication Outcomes Centre, University of California San Francisco
Follow me
Bluesky: @jcosta-font.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/jcosta-font.bsky.social)