Professor Cooper is a health economist whose work is focused on producing data-driven scholarship that can inform public policy. Cooper has published his research in leading economics and medical journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also presented his research at the White House, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

In January 2021, Zack Cooper and Fiona Scott Morton launched the “1% Steps for Health Care Reform project.” The aim of the project is to harness the power of rigorous economic scholarship to identify tangible steps that can be taken to reduce healthcare spending in the US without harming quality. The project includes 16 briefs written by leading economists that describe 16 specific interventions, which would collectively lower health care costs in the US by approximately $400 billion annually.