EXPERIMENTAL AND BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS
EXPERIMENTAL AND BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS
Daniela Teresa Di Cagno
Daniela Teresa Di Cagno
ddicagno@luiss.it
Instructional goals
This course is a follows a practical research approach to experimental and behavioral economics and is thus intended to:
1. expose you to a diverse range of experimental economics research papers
2. teach you how to think of economic problems from the perspective of an empirical science
3. provide you with a knowledge to come-up with, design, and conduct experiments.
Intended learning outcomes
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING: The student will be able to analyze and understand the main issues described during the course.
APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING: At the end of the course, the student must be able to use the tools to carry out lab and web experiments.
MAKING JUDGEMENTS: The student will acquire the ability to evaluate in an autonomous way experiments on selected topics.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS: The student will acquire the specific language in order to communicate precisely the concepts learned.
LEARNING SKILLS: The student will learn the methodology of analysis of the main problems related to experimental and behavioral issues.
Course Contents
This course introduces students to the methods of Experimental Economics and includes applications to behavioral economics. Students will be introduced to discussion about both the power and the limitations of experimental economics as a data collection method and to discoveries that have spurred a deeper interest n individual and group behavior.Students will practice the methods taught by rewieving published papers and designing their own experiments.
Reference Books
Joachim Weimann and Jeannette Brosing-Koch, Methods in Experimental Economics, 2019.
John Kagel and Alvin Roth,Handbook of Experimental Economics, Volumi I e II, Elsevier Ebooks.
Teaching Methods
Lectures and experiments.
Assessment Method
Written exam
Thesis assignment criteria
Pass the exam
Week 1
An overview of experimental economics: The History of Economic and Psycologic experiments
Week 2
Pros and cons of the experimental economics: External validity, replicability and the role for incentives.
Week 3
Methodological foundations: the induced value method, subjects, beliefs and payoffs. The influence of the experimenter.
Week 4
Methodological foundations: the induced value method, subjects, beliefs and payoffs. The influence of the experimenter.
Interaction between subjects, decisions made by subjects, the repetition of games.
Week 5
Experimental practice: setting up an Experimental Laboratory, Preparing and conducting an experiment.
Week 6
The experiment from a statistical perspective and data analysis:Operationalizing the research question, Statistical tests and power analysis.
Week 7
Experiments on risk and ambiguity
Week 8
Experiments of dynamic decision making
Week 9
Experiments on strategic interaction
Week 10
Bargaining and market experiments
Week 11
Cheating and asymmetric information.
Week 12
Discussion of students projects