Ted Frech

H. E. “Ted” Frech III is professor of economics in the College of Letters and Science and professor of technology management in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work focuses on industrial organization, health economics, antitrust, law & economics, applied econometrics, and property-rights economics.

His research spans a wide range of topics in applied microeconomics. Much of his work examines the industrial organization of health care, including health-insurance competition, hospital mergers, physician pricing, and antitrust market definition in the hospital industry. He has also written extensively on moral hazard and adverse selection in health insurance, the economics of property rights, land-use regulation, and the economic analysis of vertical restraints, advertising, and predatory pricing.

Frech has served in several leadership roles at the University of California, Santa Barbara, including as director of the M.A. and Ph.D. programs in economics and as chairman of the Department of Economics. He is also an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

He has held visiting and adjunct academic appointments at numerous institutions, including Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Curtin University in Australia, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and Sciences Po in Paris.

Frech serves as North American editor of the International Journal of the Economics of Business. He is also a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Health Care Economics and Management, Health Economics Review, and Regulation. He is the author or co-author of several books, including “Competition and Monopoly in Medical Care,” “Health Care Matters: Pharmaceuticals, Obesity, and the Quality of Life,” and “Taxing Energy: Oil Severance Taxation and the Economy.”

He earned a bachelor’s in industrial engineering from the University of Missouri and both a master’s and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.