Xiao Yu Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Duke University. Her work lies in the intersection of development economics and microeconomic theory. She develops empirically-testable models and takes the theoretical predictions to data in order to study the determinants, evolution, and persistence of organizations and institutional structure, particularly in the unique environments of developing economies. She is especially interested in how these factors generate and perpetuate socioeconomic inequality. Her interest in topics is wide-ranging, and includes intimate partner violence, child marriage, reducing bias in committee decision-making, gender wage gaps, informal financial institutions, and the selection of politicians. She also studies institutions which influence the production and transmission of information, such as credit registries and media channels, as well as markets in which traditional price mechanisms fail.

Professor Wang is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013, where she was the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and her B.A. with honors in economics, with honors in mathematics, and with honors in the liberal arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008.