Jan. 6th-10th, the Economic Science Institute, with a generous grant from the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics (IFREE), hosted 24 doctoral students from universities all over the world for the 18th Visiting Graduate Student Workshop in Experimental Economics. In a series of 10 sessions, the students first participated in an economic experiment as

“If housing tends to lead economic recoveries, then we’re in trouble. This marks the worst post-recession home-buying market since the Great Depression. Nobel laureate Professor Vernon L. Smith, who delivered the keynote address at the Cato Institute’s 30th Annual Monetary Conference on Nov. 15, noted how housing leads both recession and recoveries.” Read the full

Dec. 7th, Quazi Shahriar, Ph.D. – When Does Cheap-Talk (Fail to) Increase Efficient Coordination? Abstract: Can cheap-talk always help achieve maximum efficiency in situations that require coordination? Utilizing a class of two-person two-action coordination games, we show experimentally that cheap-talk may or may not be informative, rending it helpful for or detrimental to efficiency (relative

Nov. 30th, Chew Soo Hong, Ph.D. – How does familiarity breed investment? Abstract: In his 1921 Treatise on Probability, John Maynard Keynes offered a striking hypothesis about decision making under uncertainty: “… if two probabilities are equal in degree, ought we, in choosing our course of action, to prefer that one which is based on

Nov. 9th, Uri Gneezy, Ph.D.– Incentives and Behavior Change Abstract: Economists often emphasize that “incentives matter.” The basic “law of behavior” is that higher incentives will lead to more effort and higher performance. Employers, for example, often use extrinsic incentives to motivate their employees. In recent years, the use of incentives in behavioral interventions has

Nov. 2nd, Glenn Harrison, Ph.D.  – Asset Integration and Attitudes to Risk Abstract: Measures of risk attitudes derived from experiments are often questioned because they are based on small stakes bets and do not account for the extent to which the decision-maker integrates the prizes of the experimental tasks with personal wealth. We exploit the

Oct. 26th, Michael Baye, Ph.D. –  Product Search Online Bio: Michael Baye is the Bert Elwert Professor of Business at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. He served as the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the US Federal Trade Commission during 2007 and 2008.  Professor Baye has won numerous awards for his outstanding