Food and Drug Administration

Position Title/Short Description

Full Text of JOE Listing:

The FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is seeking economists for its Economics Staff. CDER economists have the unique opportunity to study questions on the frontier of health economics using proprietary, non-public data. Recent projects include analyzing and mitigating drug shortages, the opioid crisis, rising drug prices, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our staff is also proactive in using machine learning techniques and operations research principles to study economic issues.

Although most of our work is only circulated internally, some work is published externally in academic journals or communicated publicly through public reports or in speeches by the FDA commissioner or the President. In addition, many internal projects are used to support policy decisions made by the Center director, the FDA commissioner, the Secretary of HHS, and the President.

Candidates must be U.S. citizens and should have an interest in the following:

-Applying microeconomic concepts and empirical techniques towards solving complex economic problems;
-Communicating technical concepts to non-technical audiences;
-Working in multi-disciplinary teams;
-Working with large and complicated data sets using Python, R, Stata, or SAS.

We welcome all candidates with expertise in applied microeconomics or related fields