Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, PhD

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula holds the Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Health Policy, Economics & Law in the Health Policy and Management Department at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.  She is also a Research Associate in the Health Economics and Crime programs at the National Bureau of Economics (NBER).

Trained as an applied micro economist, Dr Pacula has been collecting legal policy data and conducting evaluations of state health policies for more than twenty-five years, applying advanced statistical methods appropriate for causal inference. Her work evaluating the supply and demand for addictive substances, including payment for and delivery of addiction treatment services, has brought her recognition from national and international policymakers, leading to invitations to serve on NIDA’s National Advisory Council Cannabis Policy Workgroup (2017), the World Health Organization’s Technical Expert Committee on Cannabis Use and Cannabis Policy (December 2019-2020), the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Committees evaluating CARA opioid spending (2021 – 2022) and public health impacts of cannabis liberalization (2023-present), the CDC’s National Injury Prevention’s Board of Scholarly Counsellors (2021- 2023), and the Canadian Five Year Review of the Cannabis Act (2023).  Since February 2023, she has served as the Co-Chair of the NASEM Forum for Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders, just before completing her four-year term as President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (1999-2023).

Before coming to USC in 2019, she spent 21 years at the RAND Corporation, serving for 15 years as co-director of RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center, where she led or contributed to studies evaluating drug markets and governments’ responses to them for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, the CDC, the European Commission, the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs, and the U.K. Home Office. Her research has been published in top economics, medical, and health policy journals including, Addiction, American Economic Review, Health Affairs, JAMA, JAMA Health Forum, Journal of Health Economics, Lancet Psychiatry, and the Review of Economic Studies.  Professor Pacula received her undergraduate degree from Santa Clara University (1990) and her doctorate in economics from Duke University (1995).