Uri Hezkia Gneezy (Hebrew: אורי גניזי; born June 6, 1967) is an Israeli-American behavioral economist, known for his work on incentives.

He currently holds the Epstein/Atkinson Endowed Chair in Behavioral Economics at the University of California, San Diego's Rady School of Management.

In his research, he typically starts with new and original questions the literature has not yet investigated, and addresses them with simple empirical demonstrations of powerful psychological effects.

This phenomenon occurs when the introduction of extrinsic incentives, such as financial rewards or punishment, undermines the internal drive to perform a task for its own sake.

One of Gneezy's seminal studies on crowding out was conducted in collaboration with Aldo Rustichini, and it involved daycare centers in Israel.

In subsequent studies, Gneezy and his colleagues explored the conditions under which extrinsic incentives can crowd out intrinsic motivation.

Choking under pressure and habit formation Together with Dan Ariely, George Loewenstein and Nina Mazar, Gneezy studies the impact of offering high levels of incentives on performance.

In a related paper with Alexander Cappelen, Gary Charness, Mathias Ekström and Bertil Tungodden, they report the results of an experiment testing whether incentives to exercise can improve academic performance.

They find strong support for this hypothesis: university students who were incentivized to go to the gym had a significant improvement in academic performance.

With regard to the latter, Gneezy and Gary Charness demonstrate, using existing data, strong gender differences in risk taking.

Extending this framework, Sanjiv Erat and Gneezy showed that people are averse to telling even white lies that have no negative consequences.