Welcome

Xuqian Ma (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Health Policy (specialization in Health Economics) at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines how cognitive capacity and external shocks jointly shape health behaviors and outcomes and human capital accumulation over the life course.

Methodologically, she employs econometric and quasi-experimental approaches to generate causal evidence from large-scale surveys, experimental tasks, and environmental data. Current projects include analyzing the role of economic rationality in preventive health behaviors, the cognitive impacts of contemporaneous air pollution exposure in low-resource settings such as Kenya, and the long-term consequences of wartime bombing on mental and cognitive health in Vietnam.

She is a Graduate Student Researcher at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), working with Professor Edward Miguel on research linking air pollution and cognition in Kenya. Her doctoral work has been supported by fellowships and awards from the UC Berkeley Health Policy Program and the Graduate Division.

Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Quantitative Economics and Econometrics from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and a Master’s degree in Applied Economics from Cornell University.