Curs 2009-2010
Llicenciatura en Economia
Economía Experimental (versión en castellano)
"Taking a course in experimental economics is a little like going to dinner at a cannibal's house. Sometimes you will be the diner, sometimes you will be part of the dinner, sometimes both." Ted Bergstrom and John Miller.
Efectivament, prendre un curs d'economia experimental és una mica com estar invitat a menjar a casa d'un caníbal. A vegades ets el comensal, a vegades passes a formar part dels menjars que s'hi serveixen i, sovint, acabes sent les dues coses alhora.
Si preneu un curs de laboratori en ciències de la naturalesa, us demanaran que feu rodar boles; fareu la dissecció de la proverbial granota; o acabareu coberts de productes químics. En tots els casos sereu sempre l'experimentador, mai l'objecte de l'experiment. És difícil imaginar-se un químic ocupant el lloc d'un àtom de nitrogen o un biòleg que estudia els reflexos de la granota, posant-se en el seu lloc durant una estoneta. En canvi, l'estudiant que prengui aquest curs serà afortunat. En els experiments que es facin a classe serà tant un participant com un observador.
En els experiments d'aquest curs estudiarem el comportament i les interaccions de la gent en situacions interessants des del punt de vista econòmic. I pel fet de ser tu mateix un d'aquests agents econòmics que pren decisions, viuràs de primera mà els problemes a què s'enfronta un agent econòmic. La nostra idea és que aprenguis sobre els principis de l'economia -i sobre com fer experiments-, tant per haver participat en els experiments com per l'anàlisi que n'hauràs de fer desenvolupant la teva capacitat d'observador científic.
El curs admet un nombre màxim de 24 estudiants per formar sis equips de laboratori. Si el nombre de sol·licituds excedeix el de places, la selecció dels estudiants es farà per mèrits acadèmics.
La mecànica del curs
Students in the Experimental Economics course will be instructed on the experimental method and its applications, and will have to design, perform and analyze two experiments, one of them original.
The course will be divided in two parts. During the first part we will show you how economists use the laboratory tools. For that purpose we will focus on some particular series of experiments in markets and industrial organization, bargaining, public goods, coordination, learning, neuroeconomics and individual decision-making. Students will be grouped in teams and every team will have to replicate and analyze in class one classical experiment. The presentation of the experiment in class should include a motivation, a complete description of the related literature and a careful comparative analysis of the results obtained in class.
During the second part of the course, every team will chose, in coordination with the course instructor, a topic to be experimentally explored. The experiment, this time an original one, will again be run and discussed in class. A complete paper on the experiment, with a motivated introduction, a description of the literature, results and conclusions including an indication of further research, plus an appendix with instructions, will have to be handed in no later than June 26th.
We expect that this course will help you to think about economics as an experimental science and to provide you with a working knowledge of techniques for conducting laboratory experiments in economics. Your grade will be based on your performance as an experimentalist, which means on your class participation, on how you run your experiments, on your class presentations, and on the term paper. Notice that there will be no exam in this course. This also means that there will be no exam in September. If you fail to work during the course, your course grade will be: fail, June and September.
You should be aware that I assume that you are familiar with the contents of Experimental Methods: A Primer for Economists, by Friedman and Sunder (1994). This is a short and basic book, very informative and easy to read. Some copies of the book are available in the UPF library.
The following is a more detailed Program of the course lectures. The rest of the scheduled time is devoted to your experiments and your analysis of your experiments as is described in the accompanying timetable.
Programa i lectures
Els articles marcats amb un * són de lectura obligatòria. Normalment, podeu accedir a la versió electrònica de l'article a través de la biblioteca. Si són capítols de llibres o articles de difícil localització, podreu trobar-ne una còpia a la meva pàgina web. Els llibres The Handbook of Experimental Economics i Handbook of Experimental Economics Results es troba a la biblioteca i també al meu despatx.
Les regles del joc
Binmore, Ken (1999) "Why experiment in economics", Economic Journal 109, F16-F24.
Loewenstein, George (1999) "Experimental economics from the vantage point of behavioral economics", Economic Journal 109, F25-F34.
Roth, Al. E. (1994) "Let's Keep the Con Out of Experimental Econ.: A Methodological Note" http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/methods.html
Roth, A. E. (1995), "Introduction to experimental economics", in Kagel, J., A. E. Roth, The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Princeton, 1-98.
Smith, V. (1982), "Microeconomic Systems as an Experimental Science", American Economic Review, December, 923-955.
*Smith, V. (1992), Experimental Methods in Economics, UPF Working Paper, June.
Decisió individual
Camerer, Colin (1995) "Individual decision making" in J. Kagel and A.E. Roth (editors), Handbook of Experimental Economics, Princeton University Press, 587-703.
Hey, John (2005) "Why We Should Not Be Silent About Noise", Experimental Economics, 8:325-345.
Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky (1979) "Prospect Theory: An analysis of decision under risk," Econometrica 47 (2), 263-291.
*Richard H. Thaler, "The Winners Curse", Cap. 6, The Free Press 1992.
Wu, George, Jiao Zhang, and Richard Gonzalez (2004) "Decision under risk", Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, Nigel Harvey and Derek Koehler (Editor), Blackwell, Oxford.
Conflicte i cooperació; coordinació, punts focals
*Poundstone, W. (1992) Prisoner's Dilemma, Doubleday, Ch. 6.
Selten, R and R. Stoecker (1986) End Behavior in Sequences of Finite Prisoner's Dilemma Supergames, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 7, 47-70.
Andreoni J. and J. H. Miller (1993), Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Experimental Evidence, Economic Journal 103, 570-85.
Axelrod, R. (1984) The Evolution of Cooperation, New York, Basic Books.
Van Huyck, J. B., R. C. Battalio, and R. O. Beil (1990), "Tacit Coordination Games, Strategic Uncertainty and Coordination Failure", American Economic Review, 80, 234-48.
Béns públics
*Isaac, R. M., K. McCue and C. Plott (1985), Public Goods Provision in an Experimental Environment, Journal of Public Economics 26, 51-74.
Ledyard, John O. (1995) "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research" in Kagel, J., A. E. Roth, The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Princeton, 111-181.
Dictadors, ultimàtums, altruisme i reciprocitat
*Binmore, Ken (2007) Economic Man-or Straw Man? A Commentary on Henrich et al., Economics Department, University College London.
Gueth, W., R. Schmittberger, and B. Schwarz (1982), "An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 3, 367-388
Roth, Alvin et al. (1991), "Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: Some Experimental Evidence". American Economic Review 81, 1068-1095.
Roth, A. E, J. K Murnighan and F. Schoumaker (1988), "The Deadline Effect in Bargaining: Some Experimental Evidence", American Economic Review 78, 806-823.
Prasnikar, V. and A. Roth (1992), "Considerations of Fairness and Strategy:Experimental Data from Sequential Games", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 865-888.
*Camerer, C. and Thaler, R. (1995) "Anomalies: Ultimatums, Dictators, and Manners", Journal of Economic Perspectives 9 (2), 209-219.
Mercat de treball, incentius, salaris, contractes
Fehr Ernst, Simon Gachter and Georg Kirchsteiger (1997) "Reciprocity as a a Contract Enforcement Device", Econometrica, 65:4, 833-60.
Fehr Ernst and Armin Falk (1999) "Wage Rigidity in a Competitive Incomplete Contract Market" Journal of Political Economy 107, 106-34.
*Fehr, Ernst and Simon Gachter (2000), "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity", Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 (3): 159-181.
Organització de mercats
*Smith, V. (1982) "Markets as Economizers of Information: Experimental Examination of the Hayek Hypothesis", Economic Inquiry, April, 165-179.
Holt, Charles A. (1995), "Industrial Organization: A Survey of Laboratory Research", in Kagel, J., A. E. Roth, The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Princeton, 349-435.
*Holt, Charles A., L. Langan y Anne P. Villamil (1986) "Market Power in Oral Double Auctions", Economic Enquiry, January 1986, 107-123.
Gode, D. and S. Sunder (1993) "Allocative Efficiency of Markets with ZI Traders, Journal of Political Economy, 119-37.
Raonament iteratiu, neuroeconomia/geneconomia
Bosch-Domènech, Antoni, José G. Montalvo, Rosemarie Nagel and Albert Satorra (2002) "One, Two, (Three), Infinity, ...: Newspaper and Lab Beauty-Contest Experiments", American Economic Review 92 No. 5, 1687-1701.
Alan G. Sanfey, James K. Rilling, Jessica A. Aronson, Leigh E. Nystrom, Jonathan D. Cohen (2003) "The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game", Science vol. 300, 13 June, 1755-1758.
Camerer, Colin F.; George Loewenstein; and Drazen Prelec (2005) "Neuroscience ca inform economics", Journal of Economic Literature Vol. 43, No. 1, March.
Ming Hsu, Meghana Bhatt, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, and Colin F. Camerer (2005) 'Neural Systems Responding to Degrees of Uncertainty in Human Decision- Making' Science : Vol. 310. no. 5754, 1680 - 1683.
Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher and Michael Kosfeld "Neuroeconomic Foundations of Trust and Social Preferences", American Economic Review - Papers & Proceedings 95 (2005), 346-351.
Mercats d'actius: bombolles
Sunder, Shyam (1995) "Experimental Asset Markets: A Survey", in Kagel, J., A. E. Roth, The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Princeton, 445-495.
Plott, Charles R. (2000) "Markets as Information Gathering Tools", Southern Economic Journal, 67 (1), 1-15
*Smith, Vernon L., Gerry L. Suhanek and Arlington W. Williams (1988), "Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogeneous expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets", Econometrica 56(6), 1119-52.
Lei, Vivian, Charles N. Noussair and Charles R. Plott (2001), "Non-speculative Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Lack of Common Knowledge of Rationality vs. Actual Irrationality", Econometrica, Vol 69, No. 4, 831-859.
Subhastes
*Kagel, John H. and Dan Levin (1986) "The Winner's Curse and Public Information in Common Value Auctions", American Economic Review, December, 894-920.
Kagel, J. H. (1995) "Auctions: A Survey of Experimental Research" in Kagel, J., A. E. Roth, The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Princeton, 501-557.
Cox, J., V. Smith and J. Walker (1988) "Theory and Individual Behavior of First Price Auctions", Journal of Risk and Uncertainty March, 61-99.
Harrison, G. (1989) "Theory and Misbehavior in First Price Auctions", American Economic Review, September, 749-762.
Avaluació
Les notes dependran de diferents factors:
1. Participació a classe.
2. Resultat de l'examen de meitat de curs.
3. Qualitat de la replicació de l'experiment clàssic i de la presentació feta a classe.
4. Interès, originalitat i realització de l'experiment original i de la presentació feta a classe.
5. Qualitat del treball escrit.
No cal dir que, al no haver-hi examen al juny, tampoc no n'hi ha al setembre.