Maria Polyakova

Maria Polyakova, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Policy at Stanford School of Medicine and Associate Professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Economics at Stanford University, where she is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and serves as an Editor of the Journal of Health Economics. Her research spans many areas of health economics, including health insurance, healthcare labor markets, and individual decision-making in health and healthcare. A unifying thread is evaluating whether markets and government policy effectively serve individuals and families or introduce distortions. Her ongoing work focuses on how families navigate prolonged health shocks. Maria received her BA in Economics & Mathematics and German Studies (with a concentration in History) from Yale University in 2008 and her PhD in Economics from MIT in 2014.