Sarah Kotb

Department of Economics

University of Utah

Salt Lake City, UT

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Utah. My research sits at the intersection of health and public economics, with a focus on how low-income Americans interact with the health insurance system and the safety net. I study why eligible individuals fail to enroll in the programs designed to help them, how the design of insurance and provider payment shapes access to care, and what these frictions mean for health, financial security, and inequality.

Much of my current work centers on Medicare and Medicaid — including take-up of the Medicare Savings Programs among low-income Medicare beneficiaries, the role of Federally Qualified Health Centers and the 340B drug pricing program in the primary care safety net, and the consequences of fragmented insurance coverage for dual-eligible populations.

I received my Ph.D. in Health Policy (Economics track) from Harvard University in 2025, where I was advised by Tim Layton, Anna Sinaiko, and Marcella Alsan. I was also an IvyPlus Visiting Student in Stanford’s Department of Health Policy, and before graduate school I was an Empirical Research Fellow at Stanford Law School.

You can reach me at sarah.kotb [at] utah.edu. My CV and Google Scholar are also linked here.

news

Aug 01, 2026	New working paper: The 340B Trade-Off between Affordable Drugs and Accessible Primary Care: Evidence from Federally Qualified Health Centers, with Ziping Ye and Amanda Su, now under review.
Oct 03, 2025	Our paper on Medicare Savings Program take-up, with Amanda Su and Anna Sinaiko, is out in JAMA Network Open.
Jul 01, 2025	I joined the Department of Economics at the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor.

selected publications

JAMA Netw Open
Medicare Savings Program Take-Up Estimates and Profile of Enrolled and Unenrolled Individuals

Sarah Kotb, Amanda Su, and Anna D. Sinaiko

JAMA Network Open, 2025

Abs DOI Bib HTML

Cross-sectional study estimating national and state-level take-up of the Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs) from 2018–2020 and characterizing enrolled versus unenrolled eligible individuals. About 56.7% of eligible beneficiaries were enrolled; enrollees had worse health, lower income, and fewer assets than eligible non-enrollees, suggesting the MSPs are reaching those with greater financial and health insecurity.
@article{kotb2025msp, title = {Medicare Savings Program Take-Up Estimates and Profile of Enrolled and Unenrolled Individuals}, author = {Kotb, Sarah and Su, Amanda and Sinaiko, Anna D.}, journal = {JAMA Network Open}, volume = {8}, number = {10}, pages = {e2535408}, year = {2025}, publisher = {American Medical Association}, doi = {10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.35408}, }
Natl Tax J
Does Informing Employees about Tax Benefits Increase Take-Up? Evidence from EITC Notification Laws

Taylor Cranor, Jacob Goldin, and Sarah Kotb

National Tax Journal, 2019

Abs DOI Bib HTML

We use state and time variation in the adoption of employer EITC notification requirements, linked to administrative tax data, to estimate their effect on EITC claiming, filing behavior, and labor force participation. We find precise null effects, casting doubt on the effectiveness of the notice requirements as implemented.
@article{cranor2019eitc, title = {Does Informing Employees about Tax Benefits Increase Take-Up? Evidence from {EITC} Notification Laws}, author = {Cranor, Taylor and Goldin, Jacob and Kotb, Sarah}, journal = {National Tax Journal}, volume = {72}, number = {2}, pages = {397--434}, year = {2019}, publisher = {University of Chicago Press}, doi = {10.17310/ntj.2019.2.04}, }

R&R

Separated at Birth: The Fragmentation of Health Insurance and Underinvestment in Preventative Care

Sarah Kotb

2026

Revise and Resubmit, \em American Journal of Health Economics

Bib

@unpublished{kotb_separated_rr,
  title = {Separated at Birth: The Fragmentation of Health Insurance and Underinvestment in Preventative Care},
  author = {Kotb, Sarah},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Revise and Resubmit, {\em American Journal of Health Economics}},
}

Under Review

The 340B Trade-Off between Affordable Drugs and Accessible Primary Care: Evidence from Federally Qualified Health Centers

Sarah Kotb, Ziping Ye, and Amanda Su

2026

Under review

Bib

@unpublished{kotb_340b_ur,
  title = {The 340{B} Trade-Off between Affordable Drugs and Accessible Primary Care: Evidence from Federally Qualified Health Centers},
  author = {Kotb, Sarah and Ye, Ziping and Su, Amanda},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Under review},
}