Dr. Catherine Eckel is Sara and John Lindsey Professor in the Liberal Arts and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at Texas A&M University, where she directs the Behavioral Economics and Policy Program. She has held faculty positions at the University of British Columbia, Virginia Tech, and the University of Texas at Dallas, where she was founder and director of the Center for Behavioral and Experimental Economic Science. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia.
As an experimental economist, she has made important contributions on topics that are both policy-relevant and of interest to the academic community. Examples include studies of: financial decision making; altruism and charitable fundraising; preferences and behavior in poor, urban settings; the coordination of counter-terrorism policy; gender differences in preferences and behavior, including risk-taking and cooperation; discrimination by race and gender; racial/ethnic identity; and undergraduate academic success. She is or has been a PI or Co-PI on twenty-four grants from the National Science Foundation totaling over $4.4 million. Her research has been funded by private foundations including the Russell Sage Foundation, the Aspen Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Dr. Eckel is Past President of the Economic Science Association (the professional organization of experimental economists), and of the Southern Economic Association (the largest regional association in Economics). She served for two years as an NSF program director for the economics program and currently serves on the Advisory Committee of NSF’s Directorate for Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences. She was co-editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2005-2012), and has served as associate editor or on the editorial boards of twelve journals. In 2013, Dr. Eckel she was awarded the prestigious Carolyn Shaw Bell Award, given annually by the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, for her work developing and participating in mentoring programs for women assistant professors.
Dr. Alex Brown received his Ph.D. in Social Science from California Institute of Technology in 2008. He joined Texas A&M as an Assistant Professor of Economics in that same year. He was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and full professor in 2019. Dr. Brown’s research focuses on how individuals deviate from standard economic theory in ways predicted by psychology. Specifically, the research has two key areas: he examines how slight changes in an individual’s perception of timing of events can drastically alter decision making and how individuals consistently fail to anticipate the strategic decision making of others. He has received over $1.5 in external research funding from the Federal Highway Administration and National Science Foundation. He has written 16 peer-reviewed journal articles and one encyclopedia article. He has served as associate editor at Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization since 2014.
Dr. Marco Castillo is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Texas A&M. He also holds the position of Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Institute at University of Melbourne in Australia and is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA) in Germany. He has previously held faculty positions at the University of Newcastle, Georgia Institute of Technology and George Mason University. His research focuses on the use of experimental methods to identify optimal policy design and interventions in areas ranging from child development, human capital accumulation, discrimination, and charitable giving. He received his PhD in Applied and Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001.
Dr. Ragan Petrie is a Professor in the Department of Economics and a Cornerstone Faculty Fellow in Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. She holds the Elton Lewis Faculty Fellowship in Liberal Arts at A&M and is a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Institute at University of Melbourne in Australia. She has previously held faculty positions at Georgia State University and George Mason University. Dr. Petrie uses field and lab experiments to research topics in public and labor economics, including motives for charitable giving, gender differences in bargaining and competition, discrimination, and the effect of the economic preferences of children on educational outcomes. She currently serves as a co-editor of Experimental Economics. She received her joint PhD in Economics and Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002.
Dr. Danila Serra received her PhD from the University of Oxford in 2009. She joined Texas A&M as an Associate Professor in 2019. Previously, she taught at Southern Methodist University and Florida State University. She is the inaugural recipient of the Vernon Smith Ascending Scholar Prize, which seeks to inspire early-career scholars to emulate Dr. Smith’s joyous zeal for scientific discovery. Her research interests include: Economics of Corruption, Development Economics; Experimental and Behavioral Economics, Gender and Economics.