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This story is part of the . Our affiliated students and faculty share why econ matters to them, their work, and our world.

Maria Polyakova is fascinated by how people think about social issues and how different social contracts are formed.

As a Yale undergrad in the mid-2000s, Polyakova — who was then considering a career in cognitive science — realized that economics provides a lens through which she could better understand structural issues in society. In an economic history course on the British Industrial Revolution, she was struck by how little is known about why some societies work well and others less so. Economic modeling, she discovered, offers a way to better understand these and other complex issues.

“Economics helps you think about societal problems in ways that you wouldn’t otherwise,” says Polyakova, who majored in economics and mathematics and whose senior thesis analyzed the opposing approaches the U.S. and the Soviet Union took to rebuilding Germany after World War II. “Economics can seem technical, but it actually lets you tell a story.”

Today, Polyakova works at the forefront of a vital social nexus — the role of governments in the design and financing of healthcare systems and the effects of those systems on families and economies — as an associate professor of health policy at the Stanford School of Medicine and the Tad and Dianne Taube Healthcare Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Her research has produced a wide range of policy-relevant insights, among them the significant impacts that has on the provision of health care in the U.S. and that has on families with access to it and those without.

At Stanford, Polyakova works with about 30 economists and decision scientists as part of Stanford Health Policy, a joint effort of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the School of Medicine. The ability to do her research in close proximity to doctors and patients was a big reason why she joined Stanford’s faculty shortly after earning her PhD in economics from MIT in 2014.

“In an interdisciplinary department, I have a lot of freedom to choose what questions to ask and what audience to address with my work,” Polyakova says.

Why Encina Commons?

Maria chose to be photographed on Stanford's campus at Encina Commons. "The columns and stonework inspire pure academic inquiry and remind me of classic liberal arts values, which all can get easily lost in the hustle and bustle of modern empirical, computer-focused research," she says. 

Story by Krysten Crawford. Photos by Ryan Zhang. Published in 2024.