LIU Tracy Xiao, a tenured associate professor at the Department of Economics of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (Tsinghua SEM), has been elected as a member of the executive committee of the Economic Science Association (ESA), becoming the first professor-scholar from the Chinese mainland to hold such a position.

The ESA is a professional organization devoted to economics as an observational science, using controlled experiments to learn about economic behavior. It collects data through experiments both in the laboratory and in the field, and it analyzes that data using statistical and measurement methods in order to promote the development of economics. Former ESA presidents include Vernon L. Smith, who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002, and Alvin E. Roth, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2012.

Tsinghua SEM has focused on building up a high-quality faculty in recent years. Many of its researchers have been admitted to various international academic institutions, helping the school build up related disciplines. Professor LIU's membership of the ESA's executive committee demonstrates that her academic achievements have been recognized by her international peers and the ESA. This will help Tsinghua SEM to gain more influence in the field of experimental economics on the world stage, and it will help Chinese scholars to amplify their voices in the international community.

LIU Tracy Xiao received a bachelor's degree from Renmin University of China’s School of Information and she then attained a doctoral degree in information from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the US. After that, she took a teaching job at Tsinghua SEM, where she works to this day.  

Professor LIU's main research interests are experimental economics, behavioral economics, information economics, and market design. She also serves as associate editor of Management Science, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, and Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Her academic papers have been published in some of the world's top economics and management science journals, such as Management Science, Games and Economic Behavior, and Journal of Development Economics. Her papers have also been published at some of the worlds most influential machine learning and artificial intelligence conferences, such as the International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) and the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).

Editor: REN Zhongxi