Eileen Appelbaum
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About Eileen
Dr. Appelbaum’s research and peer-reviewed publications examine a wide array of changes in the structure of the economy that affect outcomes for companies, workers and consumers. In Manufacturing Advantage, coauthored with Professors Arne Kalleberg, Peter Berg and Tom Bailey, she examined the effects of work organization and technology on outcomes for firms and workers. In Unfinished Business, coauthored with Ruth Milkman, she examined the effects of paid family leave in California on employers and employees. It has been widely cited in discussions of national paid family and medical leave policy. Her 2014 award-winning book Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street, coauthored with Cornell University Professor Rosemary Batt, was the first to look at the effect private equity has on the companies it acquires, and on their workers, customers, patients, creditors, and vendors. The book examines PE’s effects from this perspective and is the basis for much subsequent academic research and investigative journalism. For more than a dozen years, she has studied the financialization of hospitals and health care. Her 2019 report on Private Equity in Health Care, Who Wins and Who Loses (coauthored with Professor Batt) examined PE in hospitals, including buying up hospital-based physician practices and charging patients exorbitant prices for emergency and other services. This research played an influential role in Congress’s decision to ban most surprise medical bills to patients as of January 1, 2022. Her later publications, joint with Professor Batt, examine the financialization of many segments of health care and provides an analysis of taxpayer-financed capitalism in healthcare.
Contributions
Low-Wage Workers and Paid Family Leave: The California Experience
In the News
Publications
Examines a widely-cited body of research to illuminate some of the major controversies surrounding private equity including whether private equity creates or destroys jobs, whether it provides better returns than the broad stock market to investors, and whether the debt burden assumed by firms acquired by private equity substantially increases the risk of bankruptcy.
Reports on surveys of employers and workers in California about their experiences with the state’s paid family leave program, which began in 2004. Finds that the feared negative impact on employers did not materialize and that workers who used the program benefit from it.