Dr. Yam Maayan-Yeshoron

I am a historian of economics. My research focuses on the development of post-war neoclassical economics and explores how the growing mathematization of the discipline intersected with the rise of economists as public experts. In this context, I study how economists attempted to reconcile the tension between formal, mathematical analysis and the complex social realities they sought to model. I completed my PhD in Economics at Tel Aviv University in 2024, where I examined how the incorporation of formal models of rational decision theory reshaped normative economic discourse. Towards the end of my doctoral studies, I spent a year and a half as a Research Fellow at the Center for the History of Political Economy (CHOPE) at Duke University. During my PhD, I was also a Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University and a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics. I joined the Polonsky Academy at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute in 2025.

My research lies at the intersection of economics, history, and social theory. I study how economists have attempted to incorporate concepts such as power, norms, and solidarity into their mathematical models, and how this has shaped their understanding of social order and policy. My current project, The Society within the Model: The Concept of Social Institutions in the Development of Recent Economics, examines how post-war mathematical economists redefined the conceptual boundaries between markets and other institutions, and how their models reshaped understandings of governance, inequality, and collective life.

I also have a long-standing engagement with the pedagogy of economics. I serve as the Academic Director of the Social-Environmental Economy Program, which trains students across leading economics departments in Israel to critically engage with the social and environmental dimensions of economic thought and policy.