Danzon given Wharton chair Becomes first female to get chair from school

Health Care Systems Professor Patricia Danzon became the first woman professor in the Wharton School to receive an endowed chair earlier this month when the school awarded her the first Celia Moh professorship. "It's a tremendous honor and of course I am delighted," Danzon said yesterday. Danzon is internationally respected as an expert in insurance and medical systems. She earned her PhD and MA in economics from the University of Chicago. Her BA in politics, philosophy, and economics is from the University of Oxford in England. Danzon joined the Wharton faculty in 1985. "Patricia Danzon is an outstanding scholar and teacher," Wharton Dean Thomas Gerrity said in a statement. "I am pleased, thanks to the generosity of Laurence Moh, that we can recongnize her outstanding work." Danzon is noted for her studies in medical economics. "She is the world's foremost scholar on . . . medical malpractice and the cost of insurance," Mark Pauly, chairman of the Health Systems Department, said yesterday. Among her honors, Danzon received the Award for Outstanding Article from the American Association of Risk and Insurance for her study of occupational disease in 1988. The same organization presented her with the prestigious Elizur Wright Award in 1987. She was also honored as the CS-First Boston Visiting Professor at Victoria University in New Zealand. Danzon is currently associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Insurance and the Journal of Health Economics. A visiting fellowship with Australian National University, last year, highlighted her various consulting roles related to health care and insurance. Danzon was a former Atlantic Rischfield Term Professor of Health Care Studies and Insurance at Wharton. Currently she is a member of the board of referees for Research in Law and Economics. Pauly said that her academic record and honors show that the award was "very well deserved." Danzon said she plans to use the endowed professorship to "increase [her] research and teaching . . . that's the parts that had emphasis and will continue to." She added that she will continue to be active in the medical economics field as well as in insurance. The endowed professorship was established with a gift of $2 million from Laurence Za Yu Moh, who received his MBA from Wharton in 1953. Moh, who is chairman and chief executive officer of the Hong Kong-based Universal Furniture Limited, created the professorship in honor of his wife for their 30th anniversary.

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