Biography

Maria Cotofan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Economy at King's College London. She is also a research affiliate in the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), a research associate at the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University, and a research affiliate at the IZA. Previously, Maria was a Research Officer at the Centre for Economic Performance (LSE) and she holds a PhD from Erasmus University. Maria's work is predominantly in policy evaluation and particularly on topics such as the formation of work and political preferences, the causes and consequences of poor mental health, the effects of deprivation and of poor economic experiences, and the well-functioning of labour markets.

Current areas of research include:

• Labour economics: work preferences, labour market inequality, the impacts of monetary and non-monetary incentives, social mobility.
• Health economics: the causes of consequences of poor mental health, including participation in sports and volunteering, economic deprivation, and exposure to climate shocks.
• Political Economics: populism, immigrations and political preferences, preferences for redistribution, economic shock and voting preferences, political polarization; green preferences.
• Wellbeing: wellbeing and voting, wellbeing across areas, happiness poverty.