Eileen is co-director of CEPR and fellow at Rutgers University Center for Women and Work. She has held visiting positions at the Wissenschaftszentrum (Berlin), University of Manchester and Leicester University (UK), University of South Australia, and University of Auckland (New Zealand). Prior to joining CEPR, she held positions as distinguished professor and director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University and as professor of economics at Temple University. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Since 2010, Eileen’s research has focused on financialization of the economy and the role of private equity in financial engineering and restructuring of companies for financial gain. Her recent work has examined the financialization of health care. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, chapters in books, working papers, and pieces in an array of outlets, including The Hill and The American Prospect.
Her book, Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street, coauthored with Rosemary Batt, was selected by the Academy of Management as one of the four best books of 2014 and 2015 and was a finalist for the 2016 George R. Terry award. This book was the first to provide a balanced examination of private equity’s effects on the companies they acquire and the workers in those companies. It has had an important and widely acknowledged impact on research and policy on private equity.
Prior to 2010, Eileen’s research focused on organizational restructuring and outcomes for firms and workers regarding low-wage jobs, new technology and work organization, and work-family policy. She has published peer-reviewed articles in a range of journals, including Review of Radical Political Economics, British Journal of Industrial Relations, JAMA Health Forum, and Advances in Health Care Management. Her book, Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy, coauthored with Ruth Milkman, examines 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.
Several of her earlier books — The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States with Rosemary Batt, Low Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace with Annette Bernhardt and Richard Murnane, and Manufacturing Advantage: Why High Performance Work Systems Pay Off with Peter Berg, Thomas Bailey and Arne Kalleberg — were selected by Princeton University for its distinguished list of Noteworthy Books in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics.
All from Eileen Appelbaum
Stop Wall Street Looting Act: More Necessary Now Than Ever
CEPR co-director Eileen Appelbaum has written a letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren explaining the dangers of private equity.
Structural Determinants of Health: Hospitals’ Unequal Capital Investments Drive Health Inequities
Discover how the structural determinants of health inequity in the US can lead to disparities in healthcare access and outcomes.
Warren’s New Bill Makes Private Equity’s Death Grip on Hospitals a Crime
Investigating private equity in healthcare. Learn how lax regulations allowed corporate owners to profit while driving hospitals to financial disaster.
CEPR Comments to FTC, DOJ, HHS on Consolidation in Health Care Markets
Explore the impact of private equity in healthcare. Learn about the influence of Wall Street on the healthcare industry and its implications.
In Memory of Robert Solow
In Memory of Robert Solow
Statement: Final Merger Guidelines by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice
The guidelines provide a clear roadmap to antitrust agencies and courts to prevent further industry consolidation in markets already dominated by a few large firms.
Profiting at the Expense of Seniors: The Financialization of Home Health Care
Despite the evidence that Medicare Advantage costs substantially more on a per patient basis, CMS continues to promote the insurer-owned MA plans as cheaper than traditional fee-for-service Medicare.
Comment on FTC Draft Merger Guidelines
CEPR welcomes the proposed merger guidelines put forward by the FTC and the DOJ. Research we have conducted finds that, absent these guidelines, mergers in healthcare have consolidated core parts of that industry, including doctors’ practices,
Letter to ERISA Advisory Council on Private Equity and Life Insurance and Annuity Companies
I am Dr. Eileen Appelbaum, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. I have been studying private equity’s role in the U.S. economy since 2010.
Envision Bites the Dust
Envision Healthcare – the private equity-owned physician staffing firm whose clinicians can be found staffing 540 health care facilities in 45 states – was in serious financial trouble for the past year, and sought bankruptcy protection in May 2023