A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume II

A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume II
Author: Vernon L. Smith
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2018-11-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 331998425X

This sequel to A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume I, continues the intimate history of Vernon Smith’s personal and professional maturation after a dozen years at Purdue. The scene now shifts to twenty-six transformative years at the University of Arizona, then to George Mason University, and his recognition by the Nobel Prize Committee in 2002. The book ends with his most recent decade at Chapman University. At Arizona Vernon and his students studied asset trading markets and learned how wrong it had been to suppose that price bubbles could not occur where markets were full-information transparent. Their work in computerization of the lab facilitated very complex supply and demand experiments in natural gas pipeline, communication and electricity markets that paved the way for implementing, through decentralized market processes, the liberalization of industries traditionally believed to be “natural” monopolies. The “Smart Computer Assisted Market” was born. Smith’s move to George Mason University greatly facilitated government and industry work in tandem with various public and private entities, whereas his relocation to Chapman University coincided with the Great Recession, whose similarity with the Depression was evident in his research. There he integrated two fundamental kinds of markets with laboratory experiments: Consumer non-durables, the supply and demand for which was stable in the lab and in the economy, and durable assets whose bubble tendencies made them unstable in the lab as well as in the economy—witness the great housing-mortgage market bubble run-up of 1997-2007. This book’s conversational style and emphasis on the backstory of published research accomplishments allows readers an exclusive peak into how and why economists pursue their work. It’s a must-read for those interested in experimental economics, the housing crisis, and economic history.

A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume I

A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume I
Author: Vernon L. Smith
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-11-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319984047

This book provides an intimate history of Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith’s early life, combining elements of biography, history, economics and philosophy to show how crucial incidents early in his life provided the necessary framework for his research into experimental economics. Smith takes the reader from his family roots on the railroads and oil fields of Middle America to his early life on a farm in Depression-wracked Kansas. A mediocre student in high school, Smith attended Friends University, on Wichita’s west side, where an intense study of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and astronomy enabled him to pass the examinations to enter Caltech and study under luminary scientists like Linus Pauling. Eventually Smith discovered economics and pursued graduate study in the field at University of Kansas and Harvard. This volume ends with his Camelot years at Purdue, where he began his famous work in experimental economics, nurturing his research into an unlikely new field of economics.

Handbook of Experimental Economics Results

Handbook of Experimental Economics Results
Author: Charles R. Plott
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 1175
Release: 2008-08-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0444826424

While the field of economics makes sharp distinctions and produces precise theory, the work of experimental economics sometimes appears blurred and may produce uncertain results. The contributors to this volume have provided brief notes describing specific experimental results.

The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Volume 2

The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Volume 2
Author: John H. Kagel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 770
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691202745

An indispensable survey of new developments and results in experimental economics When The Handbook of Experimental Economics first came out in 1995, the notion of economists conducting lab experiments to generate data was relatively new. Since then, the field has exploded. This second volume of the Handbook covers some of the most exciting new growth areas in experimental economics, presents the latest results and experimental methods, and identifies promising new directions for future research. Featuring contributions by leading practitioners, the Handbook describes experiments in macroeconomics, charitable giving, neuroeconomics, other-regarding preferences, market design, political economy, subject population effects, gender effects, auctions, and learning and the economics of small decisions. Contributors focus on key developments and report on experiments, highlighting the dialogue between experimenters and theorists. While most of the experiments consist of laboratory studies, the book also includes several chapters that report extensively on field experiments related to the subject area studied. Covers exciting new growth areas in experimental economics Features contributions by leading experts Describes experiments in macroeconomics, charitable giving, neuroeconomics, market design, political economy, gender effects, auctions, and more Highlights the dialogue by experimenters with theorists and each other Includes several chapters covering field experiments related to the subject area studied

Experiments in Economics

Experiments in Economics
Author: Ananish Chaudhuri
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2008-11-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 113402391X

This book provides an easy to follow guide to economic experiments and specifically those that explore notions of fairness, altruism and trust in economic transactions and how findings in the field can change the way we approach a variety of economic problems.

Advances in Behavioral Finance

Advances in Behavioral Finance
Author: Richard H. Thaler
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 628
Release: 1993-08-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780871548443

Modern financial markets offer the real world's best approximation to the idealized price auction market envisioned in economic theory. Nevertheless, as the increasingly exquisite and detailed financial data demonstrate, financial markets often fail to behave as they should if trading were truly dominated by the fully rational investors that populate financial theories. These markets anomalies have spawned a new approach to finance, one which as editor Richard Thaler puts it, "entertains the possibility that some agents in the economy behave less than fully rationally some of the time." Advances in Behavioral Finance collects together twenty-one recent articles that illustrate the power of this approach. These papers demonstrate how specific departures from fully rational decision making by individual market agents can provide explanations of otherwise puzzling market phenomena. To take several examples, Werner De Bondt and Thaler find an explanation for superior price performance of firms with poor recent earnings histories in the tendencies of investors to overreact to recent information. Richard Roll traces the negative effects of corporate takeovers on the stock prices of the acquiring firms to the overconfidence of managers, who fail to recognize the contributions of chance to their past successes. Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny show how the difficulty of establishing a reliable reputation for correctly assessing the value of long term capital projects can lead investment analysis, and hence corporate managers, to focus myopically on short term returns. As a testing ground for assessing the empirical accuracy of behavioral theories, the successful studies in this landmark collection reach beyond the world of finance to suggest, very powerfully, the importance of pursuing behavioral approaches to other areas of economic life. Advances in Behavioral Finance is a solid beachhead for behavioral work in the financial arena and a clear promise of wider application for behavioral economics in the future.

In Search of a Moral Foundation for Capitalism

In Search of a Moral Foundation for Capitalism
Author: Douglas E. Stevens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2023-11-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1009434373

The search for a moral foundation for capitalism has a long history that continues to unfold, yet many are unaware of this search or its implications for the future of capitalism. The recent pandemic has uncovered cracks in the foundation of capitalism and raised doubts regarding its ability to meet the broader needs of society. In Search of a Moral Foundation for Capitalism explains the continuing demand for a moral foundation from the perspective of business leaders, business educators, and policymakers, and tells the story of the search for that moral foundation through its leading characters. By presenting the life stories and writings of these leading characters – from Adam Smith to Amartya Sen – this book reveals the rich moral critique provided by these great thinkers and explains how that rich critique was lost through the influence of the Chicago School and its emphasis on self-interest.

Behavioural Economics and Experiments

Behavioural Economics and Experiments
Author: Ananish Chaudhuri
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 459
Release: 2021-05-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000375714

- Incorporates the latest experimental evidence from across economics, psychology and neuroscience to provide cutting-edge introduction for students. - Structured around three key settings – individuals, small groups and larger impersonal groups (e.g. markets) – this text provides a logical framework for the study of economic decision-making. - Includes discussion of emotions including fairness, trust, selfishness and altruism on both a micro and macro level to show how they can influence personal decision making as well as entire economies.

Experimental Economics and Culture

Experimental Economics and Culture
Author: Anna Gunnthorsdottir
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-12-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1787438201

The contributions in this volume discuss new approaches to the measurement of culture and how to conceptualize and define values and beliefs and the groups that share them, and they contribute to the growing body of literature that documents how cultural differences in social and economic behavior.

Paving Wall Street

Paving Wall Street
Author: Ross M. Miller
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Praise for Paving Wall Street "This is a remarkable book that weaves the deep scientific roots of modern finance and modern financial institutions with humorous perspective and considerable wisdom. Few understand the pervasive and complex economic principles that govern our world of finance. Few are aware of the academic and scientific origins of financial practices and market instruments that are commonplace today. Ross Miller uses his experience and talents acquired as an experimental economist to help us understand a world that is contradictory, potentially dangerous, and paradoxical. He entertains us while doing it." --Charles R. Plott, Edward S. Harkness Professor of Economics and Political Science, California Institute of Technology "Decisions by millions of individuals produce the fierce tides and churning seas of Wall Street. Miller wields his microscope in the laboratory of experimental economics to provide a sprightly and insightful analysis of investor behavior." --Richard Zeckhauser, Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University "Dramatic new ways for buying and selling-spectrum auctions, e-commerce, derivatives-are the economics profession's contribution to the Information Revolution. This book explains how many of these innovations began with simple experiments at Caltech. The style is a refreshing combination-dramatic and fun to read, but also historically and scientifically accurate. So, I can send one to my Dad, a salesman, and another to my girlfriend, a patent attorney." --Colin Camerer, Rea and Lela Axline Professor of Business Economics, California Institute of Technology "Paving Wall Street is a first-rate insight into bubbles and the experimental research performed on the topic by leading academicians such as Vernon Smith." --David Dreman, Chairman, Dreman Value Management "Academic ideas have revolutionized how Wall Street operates. Entirely new markets have been created. This revolution continues today, accelerated by the rise of increasingly automated markets. Ross Miller has produced a book that makes the leading-edge financial and economic thinking that shapes these new markets accessible to practitioners and professionals. With no equations and a deft touch, this is an excellent guide to the future of greater Wall Street." --David J. Leinweber, PhD, Economics/Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology