A paper co-authored by Xiaoxue Sherry Gao, assistant professor in the Department of Resource Economics, has been honored with the Editors’ Prize by the Economic Science Association (ESA) for the best paper published in its flagship journal, Experimental Economics, in 2023. ESA announced the award June 19. 

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The research paper, “Behavioral Welfare Economics and Risk Preferences: A Bayesian approach,” examines how people make decisions when there’s risk involved—such as whether to buy insurance—and how to determine if those decisions are in fact beneficial. Gao and co-authors Glenn W. Harrison and Rusty Tchernis, of Georga State University, found that employing a Bayesian approach, which combines prior beliefs from the target population with new information from each individual’s unique choices, makes it easier to understand individual behavior under risk, even when the data on each individual’s choices is limited.

Gao’s research focuses on applied game theory, behavioral and experimental economics, and applied econometrics. She uses diversified methods, including mathematical modeling, experimental design and statistical methods, to look at questions of methodological importance or policy relevance.

Founded in 1985, ESA is a professional organization devoted to economics as an observational science, using controlled experiments to learn about economic behavior. It has published Experimental Economics since 1998.