We welcome our new junior colleagues!

Si Chen

Si Chen is joining from the University of Bonn. During her Ph.D., she spent a year vising the Department of Economics at Yale University. Her Ph.D. advisors were Thomas Dohmen, Sebastian Kube and Florian Zimmermann. Si's research is in the field of behavioral economics. She uses experimental and theoretical methods to study topics around belief and stress. In a current project, she investigates how people's desires for certain beliefs influence the way they acquire information. 

Si comes from China and has spent 8 years in Germany prior to moving to Vienna. She enjoys learning languages, painting, good food and good conversations. She is looking forward to connecting with her new colleagues and enjoying the wonderful city of Vienna.

Carl Heese

Carl Heese is joining us from the University of Bonn. During his PhD, he also spent a semester at the London School of Economics, and a year at Yale University. His main academic advisors were Stephan Lauermann (Bonn) and Daniel Krähmer (Bonn).

Carl's main field of research is a microeconomic theory. He has been working on questions related to political science: How manipulable are democracies through information? Does it matter for elections that people pay differently much attention to political issues? How much power should we delegate to office holders in representative democracy? Besides that, he has also been working on  questions of behavioral economics, combining theoretical insights with experimental analysis.

Carl is German, enjoys exploring different types of food, jogging, and from now on: the great city of Vienna!

Yan Xu

Yan Xu is joining us from Erasmus University Rotterdam and Tinbergen Institute. She was supervised by Aurelien Baillon and Drazen Prelec. Yan's primary research fields are behavioral and experimental economics and decision theory. She focuses on developing and testing elicitation methods for individual preferences (what people like) and private information (what people think) in various contexts.

In her spare time, Yan enjoys yoga, running, watching movies, and traveling.

When asked about her motives to join the University of Vienna, Yan said: "People I met at the interview and during my visit are very friendly. I can imagine myself working with numerous great researches in the department and living in such a great city."