Roger Lee Mendoza

Roger Lee Mendoza is an economist who has contributed to the study of health policy and health economics, and the development of privatization strategies in the United States.

He obtained his Ph.D. on a Reginald Gayle fellowship from McGill University in 1993, where he trained under Nobel Laureate in Economic Science Robert Mundell and Charles Taylor, and did his postdoctorate in Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a summer exchange student at the University of London in 1991. He completed his doctoral dissertation, on economic policy and the privatization of government corporations,   as several industrialized and developing countries were downsizing and restructuring their public sector. Like his dissertation, many of his earlier works formulated stochastic models of divestiture and corporate restructuring policies that influenced or were employed in privatization initiatives in the 1990s. In 1995, then Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, later the first Secretary of Homeland Security, appointed him a member of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRACC) in recognition of his scholarly contributions to public enterprise reform. In that capacity he helped determine appropriate privatization methods for military bases and installations which were slated by the US Secretary of Defense for closure through divestiture, merger with other military bases and facilities, conversion, and realignment.

Dr. Mendoza has contributed to scholarship on health policy through internationally, peer-reviewed publications in economics, business administration, and public health that examine disparities in the provision, production, distribution, and regulation of health care and medical services. These include studies on nephrectomy,  traditional, alternative, and complementary medicine,  tropical/subtropical leptospirosis,  infant health promotion, oral health and water fluoridation, health and wellness clubs, oro-facial clefting, autism spectrum disorders,   organ price deflation,  the informal health care sector, merit goods in public health,  underground organ trading,  biological economics, reproductive health, breast milk and breastfeeding, and aspirin use for vascular disease prevention.

Dr. Mendoza has done actuarial work on Social Security privatization and pension administration with corporate, government and non-profit organizations, including Towers Perrin, Hay Huggins, and Bancroft NeuroHealth. He specializes in defined contribution benefits and pension plans in his professional work with pension actuarial and investment firms. He has taught at the University of the Philippines, McGill University, Drexel University, and University of Pennsylvania, and published in the areas of pension economics and public sector reform. He was elected to life membership in the international honor societies of Phi Kappa Phi (scholarship in all fields), which conferred on him a Love of Learning Award in 2009 and 2010, Pi Gamma Mu (social sciences), from which he received a 2008 Chapter Heritage Award, Phi Beta Kappa (arts and sciences), and Omicron Delta Epsilon (economic science). He is a member of the American Economics Association, the International Economic History Association, and the American Society of Pension Actuaries. He is also active in local and national historical societies.

Dr. Mendoza is biographically listed in Who's Who in America, and received the S. Joseph Royer Prize in business economics, for his professional and scholarly contributions. Fluent in Spanish, French, and Tagalog, he has travelled and lectured extensively on health care management within and outside of the United States.