Rate My Professor Tom Wilkening

Tom Wilkening is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics within the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne, where he has held academic positions since 2008. He began as a Lecturer from 2008 to 2013, advanced to Senior Lecturer from 2013 to 2015, became Associate Professor from 2015 to 2018, and was promoted to full Professor in 2019. Wilkening obtained his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008. Prior to that, he earned a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 2001, graduating summa cum laude with honors. His academic journey also includes recognition as a MIT Presidential Fellow from 2003 to 2005 and a Flinn Scholar from 1997 to 2001.

Wilkening's research focuses on mechanism design, experimental economics, and organizational economics, encompassing interests in microeconomics, industrial organization, development economics, Asian economics, behavioral economics, and experimental methods. His influential publications appear in leading journals, including "Behavioral Constraints on the Design of Subgame-Perfect Implementation Mechanisms" (with Ernst Fehr and Michael Powell) in the American Economic Review (2021), "Getting Dynamic Implementation to Work" (with Yi-Chun Chen, Richard Holden, Takashi Kunimoto, and Yifei Sun) in the Journal of Political Economy (2023), "The Lure of Authority: Motivation and Incentive Effects of Power" (with Holger Herz and Ernst Fehr) in the American Economic Review (2013), "Protecting Antiquities: A Role for Long-Term Leases?" (with Michael Kremer) in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (2025), and "Cognitive Heterogeneity and Complex Belief Elicitation" (with Ingrid Burfurd) in Experimental Economics (2022). He has garnered significant funding, such as the ARC Future Fellowship Award in 2019 ($1,063,947), ARC Discovery Grants in 2025 ($256,570) and 2018 ($174,000), the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award in 2013 ($349,789), and various University of Melbourne grants. Additional honors include the FBE Certificate of Research Excellence (2016), FBE Prize for Exceptional Distinction in Research (2013), and fellowships at the Centre for Engineering Social and Economic Institutions. Wilkening contributes to the field as an editorial board member for the Journal of the Economic Science Association (since 2014), Experimental Economics (since 2012), and New Research in Experimental Economics (since 2012).