David Cutler

His book Your Money or Your Life gives an introduction on the US health care system. The book and Cutler's ideas were the subject of an article in the New York Times Magazine, "The Quality Cure". Professor Cutler published a book with the same title in 2014 which details how "Focusing on Health Care Quality Can Save Your Life and Lower Spending Too."

Cutler's 2003 study "Why have Americans become more obese?" discusses rising obesity as an outcome of the revolution in mass food packaging. He includes vacuum packing, improved preservatives, deep freezing, and microwaves as culprits. Consumer prices on items like various frozen foods, soda, and potato chips are increasing at half the rate of fresh fruits and vegetables, and mass preparation makes for lower costs and more food consumption.

Cutler graduated from Harvard College, summa cum laude, with a degree in Economics, and then joined the Harvard faculty after receiving his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. He served in the administration of Bill Clinton and was the senior health care advisor to Barack Obama. From 2003 to 2008, Cutler was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for Social Sciences.

David Matthew Cutler (born June 22, 1965) is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University. He was given a five-year term appointment of Harvard College Professor, which recognizes excellence in undergraduate teaching. He holds a joint appointment in the economics department and in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard School of Public Health, is a faculty member for the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and serves as commissioner on the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission.