Simon Gächter is Professor of the Psychology of Economic Decision Making at the University of Nottingham. He previously held the chair in Applied Microeconomics at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Simon Gächter received his post-graduate education at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and his PhD in 1994 from the University of Vienna. He then worked as a lecturer at the University of Vienna and the University of Linz. In 1994 he became an assistant professor at the University of Zürich, where he did his Habilitation in Economics in 1999.

Simon Gächter's research interests are in the fields of behavioral and experimental economics. He is particularly interested in behavioral issues in the labour economics, and in organizational and personnel economics. Another research interest concerns issues of voluntary provision of public goods and solutions to free rider problems. Simon Gächter has published in Econometrica, American Economic Review, Science, Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Review, Management Science, Games and Economic Behavior, among others.

In 2005 Simon Gächter received the Gossen Prize of the Verein fur Socialpolitik and in 2009 he was elected into the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is also a Fellow of the European Economic Association.

Simon Gächter was recently awarded his second European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator Grant on the Behavioural Principles of Large-Scale Cooperation (09/2021-08/2026).

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in November 2003.