From Seminar Room to Healthcare Markets: Professor Anran Li's Journey to Minnesota

Sometimes the most ordinary moments reshape your entire life. For Assistant Professor Anran Li, it was walking into a seminar room as an undergraduate economics student in China, not knowing that the presentation would set the course for her academic career.

"I was already studying economics, but to be honest, this one seminar really got me into it," Li said. The topic seemed straightforward—a policy evaluation examining elderly care for Asian populations. She doesn't remember the exact research question, but what happened in that room stayed with her.

"They were conducting a policy evaluation study, and I found it incredibly convincing," she said. "They were making policy recommendations for policymakers on how to design aging care systems. That was the moment where I felt like economics was really powerful and very useful."

Li had been going through the motions of her economics coursework, but suddenly she saw something bigger—the potential for research to influence real policy decisions, to actually improve people's lives.

That seminar planted a seed, but it would take crossing an ocean for Li to fully understand her calling. When she came to the United States for graduate school, another seemingly ordinary experience shaped her research focus: navigating American healthcare as an international student.

"Coming from overseas, I found the healthcare system very different in terms of how easily you can access care," Li said. Back home in China, getting preventive care felt natural, even expected. "Your employer would really encourage you to do preventive care, to do annual checkups."

But in the United States, she wondered why such basic healthcare seemed harder to obtain. "Here, there's not much messaging prompting you to do that—it's not part of the culture." The contrast struck her as fundamentally economic. In China's single-payer system, someone had clear incentives to keep you healthy. In America's fragmented insurance market, those incentives seemed muddled.

The same curiosity from that undergraduate seminar would eventually drive her to Northwestern University, where she spent six years earning her PhD in healthcare economics. Her dissertation revealed why America's healthcare system chronically underprovides preventive care—"investment externalities," where insurance companies invest in keeping patients healthy but lose those patients to competitors.

"The fact that your current payer is not managing your health today makes you become very unhealthy when you transition to your next employer, which costs them a lot," Li said. "This extra cost that your current payer is imposing on your future payer is kind of an externality."

Li's published work continues revealing hidden patterns. Her Health Affairs paper found that enrollment brokers—private companies hired by states to increase Medicaid participation—had no meaningful impact despite costing an average of nearly $19 million annually per state.

Finding a Home in Minnesota 

Professor Manuel Amador, who chaired the search committee that brought Li to Minnesota, recognized her potential immediately. "She was one of the strongest candidates we saw,” he said. “She really fits with the Minnesota style of economics—careful modeling on empirically relevant issues.”  

What particularly excited the department was Li's potential to push the field forward. "She's working in an area where there's a lot of new research going on in health economics and industrial organization," Amador said. "I think she'll be a fantastic contributor to our students."

Associate Professor Kyle Herkenhoff, who also served on the selection committee, shared this enthusiasm. "We are elated to have hired someone like Anran Li who is at the frontier of industrial organization and health economics," Herkenhoff said. "These topics are at the heart of many important policy debates and are rapidly growing in influence. What really excited us was Anran's ability to make both significant methodological and conceptual advances in these fields. This is exactly what 'Minnesota prime time' is, and why we hired her."

Amador shared this sense of anticipation. "I'm excited about seeing what she's going to work on next, what problems she's going to be tackling and what interesting things she's going to find."

After completing her PhD at Northwestern and spending a year at Cornell, Li found herself drawn to Minnesota for the unexpected community she discovered. "The department has fantastic colleagues," Li said. "People from all different perspectives and backgrounds talk, and that is really something unique about the department here."

The integration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis adds another dimension. "That kind of gives you a double department,” Li said. “You have many, many people to talk with."

Li also discovered unique research possibilities in Minnesota's healthcare landscape, particularly through partnerships with innovative systems like Fairview. "They're very open to collaborate with researchers and very innovative themselves in using automated technology to improve clinical care efficiency."

Looking Forward

Looking ahead to the classroom, Li brings enthusiasm for making economic principles accessible to students at all levels. Her teaching philosophy centers on connecting abstract concepts to real-world examples, whether explaining demand and supply through Twin Cities retail markets or analyzing why grocery stores structure their promotions in particular ways. 

Li brings what Amador calls a "fresh perspective" that can energize the entire program. "She's fresh and exciting, and will incentivize our students to do new things, which I think is the main objective."

As she settles into her new role, Li continues embracing the unexpected. Having conquered her fear of water by learning to swim at Northwestern, she's now taking hip-hop and jazz dance lessons in Minneapolis. She's also discovered Tea House, a restaurant near campus where the chef's cooking style reminds her of home.

Sometimes the most ordinary moments—walking into a seminar, struggling with healthcare access, choosing a job offer—become turning points that define our paths. Li's journey demonstrates economics' power to illuminate real-world problems, and her international perspective and research methods promise to enrich the department's mission of improving outcomes for society.

"She was the department's top choice of the people we saw," Amador said. "We're very happy that she's here."