Kelsey Moran Receives the 2026 Heinz König Young Scholar Award
AwardsAward for Research on Lack of Data Portability
ZEW Mannheim presented the Heinz König Young Scholar Award for the 26th time. The economist Kelsey Moran, PhD, from the University of Miami, has received the award for the paper “Costs of Technological Frictions: Evidence from EHR (Non-)Interoperability”, which she co-authored with Rebekah Dix, PhD, from Stanford University and Thi Mai Anh Nguyen, PhD, from New York University.
The award-winning paper addresses one of the most significant market failures in the digital economy: the lack of data portability. Using data on the software systems of US hospitals and Medicare claims data, the authors show and quantify how technological frictions between the electronic health record systems of different hospitals not only generate financial costs, but also directly endanger human well-being and the quality of essential public services.
Professor Irene Bertschek, head of ZEW’s “Digital Economy” Research Unit, praises the work: “The award-winning paper is a remarkable achievement by three young researchers. It provides a solid and comprehensive analysis of the social costs of digital fragmentation in the healthcare sector. The paper is also highly relevant to key aspects of European digital market regulation, particularly the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires large digital platforms to ensure interoperability and data sharing.”
About the Heinz König Young Scholar Award
The Heinz König Award is endowed with 5,000 euros. The prize is sponsored annually by a member of the ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice – this year by Hornbach Baumarkt AG. Dr. Joanna Kowalska, Chief Financial Officer of the company presents the prize and congratulates the winner: “It is a special pleasure for me and the Hornbach Baumarkt AG to support young, promising researchers. I was particularly impressed by the high level of social and regulatory relevance of the award-winning work. Its clear derivation of welfare effects and its connection to current economic policy issues in the field under study underline the outstanding quality of the paper.”
The Heinz König Young Scholar Award is named after the late founding director of ZEW, Professor Heinz König, who died in 2002. The award recognises excellent empirical research papers by up-and-coming researchers. This is done in the spirit of Heinz König, for whom it was a great concern to specifically promote young academics. ZEW continues this tradition to this day.
The ZEW Sponsors’ Association
The ZEW Sponsors’ Association provides funding for practice-relevant research projects, supports the organisation of ZEW lecture series with top-level speakers from the areas of politics, business and academia, and sponsors prizes for excellent scientific work and policy advice. The association counts 140 large and medium-sized companies as well as private individuals among its members, who, through their commitment, support ZEW Mannheim as a strong economic research institute in Baden-Württemberg. For further information, please visit the ZEW Sponsors’ Association website (in German only).
