Katherine Ho, esteemed health economist and ‘true role model,’ dies at 53

Katherine “Kate” Ho, the John L. Weinberg Professor of Economics and Business Policy, died on Dec. 8, 2025, surrounded by family. She was 53. A memorial will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 27, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Ave., in New York.

Ho joined Princeton’s faculty in July 2018 and co-directed the Center for Health and Wellbeing in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs from 2018 to 2024. Her research interests included industrial organization and health economics, particularly how the structure of health and medical care markets, as well as interactions between healthcare companies, impact patients. She created models to measure the economic and policymaking implications of issues such as prescription drug pricing, narrow provider networks and insurer competition, among others.

Wolfgang Pesendorfer, the Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics and department chair, called Ho “a brilliant scholar, a charismatic teacher and a devoted adviser.”

“Kate was a leading scholar of healthcare markets, and her research transformed the way economists analyze these markets,” said Pesendorfer. “Using rich data and structural models, Kate’s work showed how consolidation and competition affect patients, insurance premia and welfare.”

A brilliant, warm, unflappable scholar

“Kate was one of my favorite colleagues, first at Columbia, and then at Princeton, where we co-directed the Center for Health and Wellbeing for five years, co-taught health economics, and co-supervised several Ph.D. students,” said Janet Currie, the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus, and a senior scholar at Princeton who is currently the David Swensen Professor of Economics at Yale University.

“In addition to being a brilliant academic, she was a dream to work with — warm and funny, super thoughtful, and very organized. No matter what happened, she was never flustered. With students she was strict but generous,” added Currie. “Even when she was gravely ill, she was concerned about her students' futures and worked to transition them to new advisers. Her passing is a great loss, but her legacy will live on.”

Jakub Kastl, a professor of economics who has worked with Ho since 2018 to build the department's industrial organization faculty group, noted that she “made seminal contributions to modeling bargaining between insurers and hospitals, to modeling competition between insurers, physician incentives, and drug pricing,” including work on how formularies are set and priced.

“She was a great scholar and tremendous adviser. She was very empathetic — all students loved her as she was a true role model — always willing to listen and offer advice,” Kastl added. “She was a good friend and a great colleague. I will deeply miss her.”

Ilyana Kuziemko, the Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics, a professor of economics and public affairs, and co-director of Princeton’s Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies, said she had looked up to Ho since the two met during Kuziemko’s first year of graduate school at Harvard in 2002.

“Even then, her academic brilliance and kind heart were obvious,” said Kuziemko, who joined Princeton in 2014. They became colleagues when Ho followed four years later. “Kate just seemed to excel in every role she took on: researcher, teacher, adviser, colleague, friend, mom. She will be missed by so many people in academia and beyond.”

Ho was born in 1972 in York, England. After graduating from Cambridge University in 1993 with a master’s in mathematics, she earned her A.M. in economics in 2003 and her Ph.D. in business economics in 2005, both at Harvard University. Between studies for her master’s and doctorate, Ho served as Chief of Staff to the Minister of State for Health for the U.K. Government Department of Health from 1993 to 1997. Before she was appointed a professor at Princeton, Ho taught at Columbia University from 2005 to 2018.

Ho was also visiting faculty at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s Business Economics and Public Policy Department in 2014 and Yale University’s Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics in 2009, as well as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Industrial Organization in 2008.

Ho authored journal articles and working papers in publications including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and the Journal of Political Economy. She received the Econometric Society’s 2020 Frisch Medal for her 2017 paper, “Insurer Competition in Health Care Markets,” co-authored with Robin Lee of Harvard University and published in Econometrica. Her most recent article, co-authored with Harvard's Ariel Pakes and published in PNAS this February, explores policymaking proposals for pharmaceutical drug pricing in the U.S.

Extraordinary generosity as a mentor

At Princeton, Ho taught courses including “Firm Competition and Strategy: A Mathematical Approach” and the graduate seminars “Industrial Organization & Public Policy II/III” and “Health Economics II.” In 2023, she was recognized by the Department of Economics with the Harvey Rosen Teaching Prize for her contributions to undergraduate education and the Best Adviser Award for her work with the department’s graduate students.

“Kate Ho was extraordinarily generous with her time, engaging deeply with every problem — at the whiteboard, in the margins of a draft, and in thoughtful conversation. She had an unmatched ability to cut to the core of a problem with kindness and precision, holding her students to the highest standards while making them feel deeply supported,” said Emily Cuddy, an assistant professor of economics at Duke University who earned her Ph.D. at Princeton in 2021.

“Her feedback strengthened both my work and my confidence as a researcher,” Cuddy said, “and her mentorship continues to guide how I approach research and mentoring today."

Quan Le, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School who earned his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2024, said Ho "saw in her students the best versions of ourselves and what we could be, and she pushed us to achieve just that."

"She never imposed others' goals on us, never made us apologize for our strengths, while gently making sure that we understood our shortcomings," Le added. "I just have to remember her example in my own career and in how I work with my students, and I’ll get closer to that best version of myself. That example is her greatest gift to me, and one I will always cherish."

Ho was a co-editor at Econometrica from 2015 to 2025 and an associate editor from 2020 to 2021. She served on the editorial boards of academic journals including the American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, and the Journal of Economic Literature. She was also an editor at the RAND Journal of Economics from 2018 to 2021, an associate editor at the Journal of Industrial Economics from 2013 to 2015, and an associate editor at the International Journal of Industrial Organization from 2009 to 2011, where she was later co-editor from 2011 to 2014.

She was elected to the Econometric Society in 2019, where she also served as an elected council member from 2021 to 2024. Among her many honors, she was a member of the American Economic Association and a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research. In addition to her roles on the program and scientific committees of leading economics conferences, she advised the Congressional Budget Office's Technical Review Panel on a health insurance simulation model from 2018 to 2020 and served on its Panel of Health Advisers from 2020 to 2023.

Ho is survived by her husband, Victor, children Oliver and Eleanor, father Paul Slack, and sister Alison Slack. Donations in her honor may be made to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

View or share comments on a memorial page intended to honor Ho’s life and legacy.