Rate My Professor David Smerdon
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Always approachable and easy to talk to.
Encourages students to think independently.
Creates dynamic and engaging lessons.
A true gem in the academic community.
Great Professor!
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About David
David Smerdon is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland and an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow. He earned his PhD in Economics from the Tinbergen Institute and the University of Amsterdam in 2017, with a thesis titled 'Everybody’s doing it: Essays on trust, social norms and integration,' supervised by Professors Theo Offerman and Uri Gneezy, as a General Sir John Monash Scholar. He also holds an MPhil in Economics (cum laude) from the Tinbergen Institute (2011-2013) and dual Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Commerce degrees from the University of Melbourne (2002-2006), majoring in Mathematics, Statistics, and Psychology. Following his PhD, he served as a Marie Curie PODER research fellow at Bocconi University. Prior to his academic career, Smerdon worked for three years as a policy analyst in the Australian Department of the Treasury, focusing on macroeconomics and financial markets. Since 2017, he has been at the University of Queensland, advancing from Lecturer to Associate Professor.
Smerdon primarily works in behavioural and development economics, utilizing theory and modelling, laboratory and field experiments, and econometric analysis to investigate social norms, decision-making under uncertainty, refugee resettlement impacts, income inequality and trust, harmful practices like female genital cutting in Somalia and child trafficking in Nepal, and chess economics topics including gender inequality, cheating, and cognitive performance. His collaborations span aid agencies such as USAID and Save the Children, tech firms like Chess.com and WHOOP, and the World Chess Federation (FIDE). Key publications include 'A stepping stone approach to norm transitions' (American Economic Review, 2025, with Gulesci et al.), 'Physical proximity drives gay discrimination in the gig economy' (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025, with Pearson and Albrecht), 'The effect of masks on cognitive performance' (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022), '‘Everybody’s doing it’: on the persistence of bad social norms' (Experimental Economics, 2019, with Offerman and Gneezy), and 'Higher economic inequality intensifies the financial hardship of people living in poverty by fraying the community buffer' (Nature Human Behaviour, 2020, with Jachimowicz et al.). His work has garnered 461 citations on Google Scholar. Awards include the ARC DECRA (2026-2029), Marie Curie Fellowship (2016-2017), and Tinbergen Institute Scholarship. Smerdon is also an International Chess Grandmaster, having represented Australia at eight Olympiads, and has authored chess books such as The Complete Chess Swindler (2020) and Smerdon’s Scandinavian (2015). He has refereed for journals including Experimental Economics and Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.