Nisvan Erkal

Professor Nisvan Erkal is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Business and Economics. She obtained her PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Masters through coursework. Her research specializations are experimental economics and industrial organization. Professor Erkal investigates how institutions shape human behavior and decision-making, with focuses including biased processing of information in gender discrimination and optimal design of innovation policy. She has played a leading role in establishing the experimental economics laboratory at the Faculty of Business and Economics.

Professor Erkal's career includes key publications in top journals. These encompass 'Scarcity of Ideas and Optimal R&D Policy' (Management Science, 2024), 'Do women receive less blame than men? Attribution of outcomes in a prosocial setting' (Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023), 'Leadership Selection: Can Changing the Default Break the Glass Ceiling?' (The Leadership Quarterly, 2022), 'By chance or by choice? Biased attribution of others’ outcomes when social preferences matter' (Experimental Economics, 2021), 'Gender, culture, and corruption: Insights from an experimental analysis' (Southern Economic Journal, 2009), and 'Subject pool effects in a corruption experiment' (Experimental Economics, 2009). Additional works cover propensities to engage in and punish corrupt behavior across Australia, India, Indonesia, and Singapore; welfare receipt and intergenerational transmission of work attitudes; and experimental evidence of convergence in immigrants' preferences. She has secured Australian Research Council Discovery grants, including $436,894 for research on improving teamwork via team governance design. Honors include election as a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA) in 2021 and appointment to the 2024 ARC College of Experts. Her contributions advance understanding of behavioral impacts in economics and inform policy design.

Professional Email: n.erkal@unimelb.edu.au