Silvia Saccardo, PhD

Biography

Silvia Saccardo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. She joined CMU in 2016, after completing a PhD in Management at the Rady School of Management, University of California San Diego. Silvia was born in Schio, Italy and received a Bachelor and Masters of Arts degree in Psychology with the distinction summa cum laude, both from the University of Padova, Italy. Prior to graduate school, she spent two years as visiting student at the University of California, Santa Barbara and University of California, San Diego. Silvia teaches courses in Negotiation and Behavioral Economics in Organizations at CMU, and she is a co-organizer of the Early-Career Behavioral Economics conference (ECBE). Silvia studies topics at the intersection of economics and psychology using experimental methods. She is particularly interested in understanding how motivated cognition shapes the prevalence of (un)ethical decision-making, focusing on corruption, dishonesty and discrimination. Some of her work in the area has explored the mechanisms through which bribes distort resource allocation, the role of self-deception in advice, how conflicts between ethical norms favor the emergence of discrimination by otherwise well-meaning individuals, and the factors that prevent people from providing honest feedback to others. She has also investigated the magnitude of the gender gap in preferences for competition. Another research interest concerns how to structure incentive programs using behavioral economics insights in order to promote desirable behavior change.