Faculty Expert Profile

Bhaven N. Sampat is an economist focusing on the economics, law, history, and political economy of science and technology. Among other topics, he has studied U.S. and global patent policy, the politics and economics of publicly funded science, the roles of the government in pharmaceutical innovation, and the economic history of the U.S. biomedical research enterprise. An overarching theme in his research is how science and technology policies can best be designed to contribute to improvements in health and other socio-economic outcomes.

Sampat's current research is focused on three main projects: (1) Assessing the long-run effects of the World War II research effort on U.S. science, innovation, and science and technology policy; (2) Research on pharmaceutical patent policy, innovation, competition, and access to medicines in the U.S. and globally; (3) Historical and quantitative research on the economics and political economy of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest single funder of biomedical research in the world. He also works on creating and validating new measures linking publicly-funded research investments to private sector patents, drugs, and other socio-economic outcomes, a topic of long-running interest throughout his career. A broader interest is in providing historical context and evidence to bear on current debates surrounding the advancement and governance of emerging technologies.

Sampat received his B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. (all in economics) from Columbia University, and did a post-doctoral fellowship through the Robert Wood Johnson (RWJF) Foundation's Scholars in Health Policy Research program at the University of Michigan. Most recently, he was a professor in Arizona State University's (ASU's) School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Public Affairs. Before joining ASU in 2023, he was assistant, associate, and full professor at the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. He has held visiting positions at NYU Law School and NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, among other institutions.

He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program, a founding member of the National Bureau of Economic Research's (NBER) Innovation Information Initiative (I3), a data collaborative for open innovation data and related analytics, tools, and metrics; a member of the editorial advisory board of the Milbank Quarterly, a leading health policy journal; a fellow of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU's School of Law, and an affiliated professor in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Science for Progress Initiative.

Sampat's research has been funded through the RWJF Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, the RWJF Public Health Law Research Program, the Commonwealth Fund, the Ford Foundation, and National Science Foundation, among other sources. He has published in top journals across several fields, including Science, Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, Management Science, the Review of Economic Studies, and the American Economic Review.