Her research focuses on environmental economic and health economics. She studies questions related to environmental regulations, firm behavior, and health impacts of pollution. Her current projects analyze pollution exposure inequity, location decisions of firms and families in response to environmental regulations and public pressure, and effect of environmental regulation on various health outcomes. She has several papers published in leading academic journals including the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal Environmental Economics and Management, the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, and Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics. 

Xiao holds a B.A. in accounting from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, an M.A in Economics from North Carolina State University, and receives her Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019. She worked in Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University as a postdoctoral researcher from 2019 to 2021. Before joining DKU, she has worked as an assistant professor of economic at Hunan University.