Challey Spotlight: Dr. Raymond March
Challey Scholar, Assistant Professor of Economics
Raymond March is an Assistant Professor of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at NDSU and Challey Institute Scholar. Primarily he is a health economist, focusing on the economics of pharmaceuticals, research on historical political economy pertaining to mental health care, and also the economics of regulation. When he's not doing research, you can find him in the classroom teaching microeconomics, the history of economic thought, and health economics. He also is affiliated with the NDSU Center for the Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise.
You've made a career in the space of Health Economics. Can you share how you got started? What made you interested in taking this route?
I've always been interested in the idea of free exchange, markets, and specifically, how far can you push those ideas. Are there limits to markets? Are there shortcomings? Are there areas where markets don't work as effectively as we might like them to? In economics, one of the clearest examples where there's controversy about how well markets can function, or where they might have specific limitations, is in the healthcare field for a whole host of reasons. I got interested in the idea of governance, and how can you push that into areas where people get sick, where there's a lot of risk, and where there are complicating factors. Those are all areas where markets in theory don't work specifically well and I want to see how much markets can help in these difficult situations.
One of the classes you teach is History of Economic Thought. What do you hope to achieve in teaching this subject?
Ideas Matter. Ultimately the big changes we've seen throughout history from ancient times to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, to some of the controversies we face in society today about inequality and healthcare access all circle back to this. How we tend to pursue big problems and make society flourish comes from ideas and people throughout history. These moments influence our trajectory in terms of flourishing or not flourishing.
Tell us about an upcoming project you are working on.
I'm curious about the effects of seeking government favors on how Operation Warp Speed worked. Operation Warp Speed was the government program created to get the COVID-19 vaccine out as soon as possible. How it was administered has led me to questions such as, "Why did they pick Johnson and Johnson versus AstraZeneca" and "Why did the Novavax vaccine get approved recently when it has been used across the world regularly?" I'm trying to figure out why it was these vaccines versus the other ones when I see no clear clinical reason. I think the answer to that is how the program is built and I think that's a function of the partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and the government agencies involved. I'm trying to trace out exactly how that happened.
How has philanthropy supported your work?
Without people willing to donate their time and resources to people like me, trying to figure out what the better society is, I wouldn't be able to pursue this as an occupation and passion. I wouldn't have nearly as much support to be able to do all of these kinds of projects, teach these classes, and write for the public as I do. They're an indispensable input into the ability to do this. I owe my career and a lot of gratification to these people because without them I couldn't do it.