Full professor at the University of Bologna from 2018, she carries out her research in the field of experimental and behavioral economics. Her main research interests are focused on the study of cooperation in repeated social dilemmas and learning dynamics, with applications within game theory and industrial organization. In the latest years she has also undertaken a line of research focused on the study of the effects of economic inequality on cooperation, and more recently she has also approached the analysis of the development of preferences and skills in preschool children.
Education
After a master's degree in Economics in 2004 at the University of Bologna, she received a PhD in Economics, Markets and Institutions from the IMT in Lucca in 2008.
Academic career
After a few years as a research fellow first at the University of Padua then at the University of Bologna, in 2011 she became Assistant Professor in Economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Bologna. At the same Department, she became Associate Professor in 2014 and Full Professor in 2018.
Selected publications
(for the full list, please visit: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xVNxZ6QAAAAJ&hl=en )
- Bigoni, Maria; Camera, Gabriele; Casari, Marco, How to Discipline Financial Markets: Reputation is Not Enough, Journal of the European Economic Association.
- Bigoni Maria; Camera Gabriele; Casari Marco, Money is more than memory, Journal of Monetary Economics, 2020.
- Bigoni, Maria; Bortolotti, Stefania; Casari, Marco; Gambetta, Diego, At the Root of the North-South Cooperation Gap in Italy: Preferences or Beliefs?, Economic Journal, 2019.
- Bigoni Maria; Camera Gabriele; Casari Marco, Partners or Strangers? Cooperation, monetary trade, and the choice of scale of interaction, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2019.
- Fabbri, Marco; Nicola Barbieri, Paolo; Bigoni, Maria, Ride Your Luck! A Field Experiment on Lottery-Based Incentives for Compliance, Management Science, 2019.
- Bigoni, Maria; Casari, Marco; Skrzypacz, Andrzej; Spagnolo, Giancarlo, Time Horizon and Cooperation in Continuous Time, Econometrica, 2015.
- G. Camera; M. Casari; M. Bigoni, Money and trust among strangers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013.
- M. Bigoni; S.O. Fridolfsson; C. Le Coq; G. Spagnolo, Fines, Leniency and Rewards in Antitrust, RAND Journal of Economics, 2012.
Scientific activity
She took part in numerous national and international research programmes; she has been principal investigator for the following projects:
- "Inequality and cooperation: An experimental and theoretical investigation" (SIR 2015)
- "At the Roots of Child Development: On the Role of Parental Beliefs, Preferences and Engagement" (PRIN 2017)
- "Monetary Networks" (EIEF grant 2020).
She spent time as a visiting scholar at the Stockholm School of Economics (2006 and 2007), the University of Tilburg (2008), Purdue University (2011) and Chapman University (2019).
She serves as a referee for numerous international journals on topics related to experimental and behavioral economics.
Teaching activity
Since 2013, she has been teaching Behavioral Economics at undergrad and master level, and Experimental Economics at the PhD level. Since 2025 she has also been teaching Economic Analysis of Business Strategic Decisions, at the master level.
Institutional activities and academic appointments
From May 2021 till April 2024 she was deputy-director of the Department of Economics.
From September 2019 till July 2022, she was the Director of the PhD program in Economics.
She has been member of the Board of the PhD program in Economics since 2013, and of the Department’s Executive Board since 2015.
Other activities
Since 2019 she is member of the Research Council of the European University Institute.
Since 2017 she has been a research fellow at the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA).
Since 2020 she has been a CEPR fellow.
