Ethan Lieber

Ethan Lieber is the Dillon Hall Associate Professor of Economics and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, and a National Bureau of Economic Research research associate in health economics. His research focuses on health economics, including information frictions in health care and the causes and consequences of opioid and drug deaths.

America’s Drug-Death Crisis Began With Chronic-Pain Prescribing

Economists William Evans and Ethan Lieber argue that America’s drug-death crisis began with a domestic medical failure: a late-1990s shift toward prescribing opioids for chronic pain, reinforced by pharmaceutical promotion and regulatory acceptance. In Steven Davis’s interview, they trace how counties with more underlying pain were hit hardest, how OxyContin made the shift more dangerous, and why the crisis later moved from prescription drugs into heroin and fentanyl. Their account leaves little comfort for current policy: correcting prescribing practices may address the original channel, but most deaths now come from illicit fentanyl markets that are far harder to control.

Hoover InstitutionJun 3, 202615 min read