[3][4] Mahoney earned a Bachelor of Science from Brown University in applied mathematics-economics in 2005, where he received the Samuel C. Lamport Prize for the best undergraduate thesis in economics.
He completed a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University in 2011, where he was a George P. Shultz Scholar and Ric Weiland Fellow.
[11] Mahoney's research on medical debt has received widespread media attention,[12][13] and was featured in a segment on the CBS Evening News.
[17] In 2016, Mahoney was named a Sloan Research Fellow, given to early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise.
[18] In 2021, Mahoney received the ASHEcon Medal for researchers aged 40 and under who have made significant contributions to the field of health economics.