Academy Fellow

Erte Xiao is a professor in the Department of Economics at Monash University. She conducts interdisciplinary research to explore the behavioral impacts of extrinsic incentives and the influence of social preferences and norms on decision-making. Her work challenges the standard economic theory of monetary incentives, which focuses on how incentives alter payoffs to influence behavior. Instead, she provides unique insights into how incentives convey social norms and emotions, and how informal institutions like social norms regulate behavior. Through her interdisciplinary approach, her research has impacted not only business and economics but also psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and law.

Erte’s experimental investigations on the norm-communication function of punishment have opened new avenues in understanding the role of emotions in decision-making. Collaborating with neuroscientists, she was the first to provide neuro-evidence on the mechanisms through which incentives can crowd out intrinsic motivations for pro-social behavior. Her work on social norms has contributed fundamentally new insights and theoretical frameworks that demonstrate how norms influence behavior in economic contexts. Her incentivized norm-elicitation method has been adopted globally to identify social norms and quantify their behavioral impacts.

Her recent research leverages behavioral insights to develop mechanisms that address critical social and economic issues, including advancing gender equality in the workplace, enhancing student persistence in education, encouraging charitable giving, and fostering cooperation in online markets.

Erte's work has been published in top-tier journals in economics, management, and science, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Management Science, The Economic Journal, Journal of Public Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, and European Economic Review.

Asia-Pacific regional Vice President, Economic Science Association, 2022-

Board Member, Economic Science Association Executive Committee, 2016-2019

Associate Editor, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017-

Editorial Board, The Leadership Quarterly, 2021-

Editorial Board, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2017-

Editorial Board, Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and Economics, 2016- 

Editorial Board, Experimental Economics, 2015- 

Editorial Board, Journal of Economic Science Association, 2015-  

1. Erte Xiao and Daniel Houser (2005) “Emotion expression in human punishment behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102(20), 7398-7401.

2. Cristina Bicchieri and Erte Xiao. (2009). “Do the right thing: But only if others do so”, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 22(2), 191-208.

3. Nisvan Erkal, Lata Gangadharan and Erte Xiao (2022) "Leadership Selection: Can Changing the Default Break the Glass Ceiling?" The Leadership Quarterly 33 101563 

4. Elif Incekara-Hafalir, Grace HY Lee, Audrey KL Siah and Erte Xiao (2023) "Incentives to Persevere," Management Science , 69, 9, p. 5378–5393 

5. Lata Gangadharan, Philip J. Grossman, Lingbo Huang, C. Matthew Leister, Erte Xiao (2023) "Persuadable or Dissuadable Altruists? The Impact of Information of Recipient Characteristics on Giving", The Economic Journal (Featured article), Volume 133, Issue 656, p 2925–2948,