Mario Macis

About

Mario Macis is a professor and Area Chair for Economics at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. He is also a core faculty member and part of the leadership team at the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative, an affiliate faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a research fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), and a research associate at the Center for Economic Research North-South (CRENoS). Macis is an applied economist whose research spans the intersection of markets, policy, and society, with a particular emphasis on health-related issues. His work focuses on understanding the factors that influence people's support for markets and market-based solutions to social problems, attitudes toward regulation and technology, and the impact of these elements on economic and social outcomes. He explores how incentives, social norms, and moral values shape individual choices and societal policies, contributing to fields such as health, labor, development, market design, and managerial economics. Although his research is primarily economic, it is interdisciplinary in nature, and he has published in leading academic journals including the American Economic Review, the American Economic Journal series, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Health Economics, and others. His research has also been featured in prominent media outlets like The Economist, The Atlantic, The…

Research topics

• Medicine
• Virology
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Economics
• Economic growth
• Internal medicine
• Pathology
• Environmental health
• Business

Selected publications

• Compliance with Covid-19 Social-Distancing Measures in Italy: The Role of Expectations and Duration

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 175 citations

  DOI

• Trust in AI-assisted health systems and AI’s trust in humans

  npj Health Systems · 2025-03-28 · 47 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping healthcare, promising improved diagnostics, personalized treatments, and streamlined operations. Yet a lack of trust remains a persistent barrier to widespread adoption. This Perspective examines the web of trust in AI-assisted healthcare systems, exploring the relationships it shapes, the systemic inequalities it can reinforce, and the technical challenges it poses. We highlight the bidirectional nature of trust, in which both patients and prov…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Incentivized Peer Referrals for Tuberculosis Screening: Evidence from India

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2022 · 11 citations

  We study whether and how peer referrals increase screening, testing, and identification of patients with tuberculosis, an infectious disease responsible for over one million deaths annually. In an experiment with 3,176 patients at 122 tuberculosis treatment centers in India, we find that small financial incentives raise the probability that existing patients refer prospective patients for screening and testing, resulting in cost-effective identification of new cases. Incentivized referrals opera…

  PublisherDOI

• Public Opinions on Removing Disincentives and Introducing Incentives for Organ Donation: Proposing a European Research Agenda

  Transplant International · 2024-04-03 · 7 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  The shortage of organs for transplantations is increasing in Europe as well as globally. Many initiatives to the organ shortage, such as opt-out systems for deceased donation and expanding living donation, have been insufficient to meet the rising demand for organs. In recurrent discussions on how to reduce organ shortage, financial incentives and removal of disincentives, have been proposed to stimulate living organ donation and increase the pool of available donor organs. It is important to un…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Decentralized Biobanking Apps for Patient Tracking of Biospecimen Research: Real-World Usability and Feasibility Study

  JMIR Bioinformatics and Biotechnology · 2025-03-04 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Biobank privacy policies strip patient identifiers from donated specimens, undermining transparency, utility, and value for patients, scientists, and society. We are advancing decentralized biobanking apps that reconnect patients with biospecimens and facilitate engagement through a privacy-preserving nonfungible token (NFT) digital twin framework. The decentralized biobanking platform was first piloted for breast cancer biobank members. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to demonstrate the…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nicola Lacetera

  University of Bologna

  521 shared

• Julio Elías

  Universidad del Centro de Estudios Macroeconómicos de Argentina

  138 shared

• Fabiano Schivardi

  64 shared

• Robert Slonim

  58 shared

• Pradeep K. Chintagunta

  University of Chicago

  48 shared

• Jessica Goldberg

  45 shared

• Tito Boeri

  Bocconi University

  38 shared

• Angelo Mele

  35 shared

Awards & honors

• Johns Hopkins University Discovery Award (2016)
• Johns Hopkins University early-career Catalyst Award (2015)
• Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association Excellence in Te…
• National Institutes of Health (NIH) Creative and Novel Ideas…
• National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant for Field Experiment…

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• Jeremy Sugarmanh-83
• Ruth R. Fadenh-71