I was born in Athens in 1981 and grew up quite close to the Acropolis and the Ancient Agora. I studied Banking and Finance at the University of Piraeus, before moving to Scotland where I earned my MSc in Economics (2005) and PhD in Economics (2008) from the University of Edinburgh.
In 2007 I took a break from academia when I joined the OECD Development Centre in Paris for a research project on the economies of Central Asia and the Black Sea region, with a focus on labour market outcomes and policies.
At the end of 2008 I took up an assistant professor's position at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, Department of Public Finance. This lovely city in the middle of the Alps has become my adopted home, and since January 2014 I am a Professor for Experimental Economics in its 350-year-old University. During this time I have also been a visiting scholar at the University of Athens, Brown University, the University of California at San Diego, the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, and the University of Queensland.
In 2017 I co-founded with five other colleagues from Innsbruck the SFB (Special Research Area) on Credence Goods, Incentives and Behavior.
Since 2018 I am Chairman of the Board of the Diligentia Foundation for Empirical Research, a Cologne-based foundation that supports research in the social sciences by funding a number of medium-sized research projects, as well as by means of a yearly prize for empirical research.
As of 2020, I am on the Board of the Austrian Economic Association.
My research uses mainly applied game theory and experimental methods, with data collected both in the lab and in the field. I am mostly interested in the following research topics:
- determinants of (un)ethical behavior
- asymmetric information in markets for credence goods
- affirmative action policies in the labor market
- tournament design and behavior
- social norms and cooperation
- biological underpinnings of social and economic behavior
Under "Publications" you can find out details on some of my work on these topics, while under "Media Presence" I list some of the media attention that my research has enjoyed.