Thomas MaCurdy holds a joint appointment as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Professor of Economics at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1978. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

MaCurdy’s expertise covers domestic policy related to government income-support and entitlement programs, with his research disclosing consequential empirical findings relevant to the design and impacts of public assistance policies. MaCurdy has published numerous articles and reports in professional journals and general-interest public policy venues, with studies analyzing policies in the areas of welfare, food stamps, earned income tax credit, minimum wages, unemployment compensation, child support, foster care, low-skilled training, federal and state taxes, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government aid for health care. These studies address a broad range issues, including determinants of participation rates, characteristics of beneficiaries, sources and distributions of program costs, and influences on work disincentives and incomes.

In the healthcare area, MaCurdy has conducted a wide variety of projects supporting the activities and operations of the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) and Congressional Budget Office (CBO). He works extensively on the design of payment policies. He directs major projects with CMS on the setting of Medicare payment rates in the fee-for-service (FFS), Medicare Advantage (managed care) and Part D (drugs) programs. He also currently supervises several projects supporting CMS regulatory policy responsible for the establishment and maintenance of Healthcare Exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. He has further conducted a series of studies that explore options for implementing Value Base Purchasing (VBP) in Medicare (which introduces pay-for-performance features in reimbursements) and that examine the cost drivers underlying the growth in healthcare spending. MaCurdy has performed similar work in Medicaid for a variety of government agencies, studying both the impact of payment policy and the circumstances explaining cost growth.

Among his public service activities, MaCurdy has served as a member of standing committees advising the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census, Congressional Budget Office, Institute for Research on Poverty, West Coast Poverty Center, California Health Benefits Review Program and many other state and local governmental agencies in California. He has further served in an editorial capacity for several professional journals (Econometrica, Labor Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Review of Economics and Statistics and California Policy Review).  MaCurdy received his BA in 1973 from the University of Washington and his PhD in 1978 from the University of Chicago, both in economics.