1. ECON 282: Introduction to Experimental Economics
Professor Graeme Walker
office: WMC 2696
office hours: 3:00-4:00 (Monday) or by appointment

2. “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.”
– Bergstrom and Miller

3. Brief Introduction
If you take a laboratory course in the physical sciences, you get to mix smelly chemicals, or monkey with pulleys, or dissect a frog, but you are always the experimenter and never the subject of the experiment. In the market experiments conducted in this class, you and your classmates will be the participants in the markets as well as the scientific observers who try to understand the results.
It is hard to imagine that a chemist can put herself in the place of a hydrogen molecule. A biologist who studies animal behavior is not likely to know what it feels like to be a duck. You are more fortunate. You are studying the behavior and interactions of people in economically interesting situations. And as one of these interacting economic agents, you will be able to experience the problems faced by such an agent first hand. We suspect that you will learn nearly as much about economic principles from your experience as a participant as you will from your analysis as an observer.
Bergstrom and Miller

4. Course Outline
The goal of this course is to learn about the experimental methodology, as well as some of the analysis tools needed to evaluate the outcomes of experiments
In doing this, you will be exposed to a wide range of topics in economics including:
Markets and market design
Game theory
Econometrics
Social economics (e.g. identity, learning, networks)
Crime and Punishment
Development Economics

5. Course Outline
This is not an exhaustive list of topics, but is meant to you a bit of an idea as to what to expect in 300- and 400-level course that focus solely on one of these areas.
Incomplete lecture slides will be available on the course webpage
You should print these out before coming to the lecture (try printing 4 slides to a page
Pre-requisites are ECON 103 and ECON 105, so it is assumed that students have a basic understanding of economics.

6. Grading Participation 10% Assignments 20% Midterm 30% Final Exam 40%
There will be 4 experimental sessions run in tutorials
Attendance will be taken
The full participation grade will be given randomly for one of the experimental sessions
This forces you to come to all experimental sessions
If you know you cannot make it to one of the tutorials, come see me during my office hours
Assignments 20%
There will be 2 assignments of equal weight
Assignments will involve data analysis
You can work in groups of up to 3 members
Midterm 30%
Tentatively set for June 27th
Final Exam 40%
August 13th

7. Course Schedule Date Lecture Tutorial May 9 Introduction NO TUTORIALS
Experimental Design
May 23
NO CLASSES
Experiment #1: Markets
May 30
Data Analysis: Qualitative
June 6
Data Analysis: Quantitative
Experiment #2: Public Good
June 13
Markets
How to use excel, Sample questions
June 20
Public Goods
ASS#1 due
June 27
MIDTERM
July 4
Game Theory
Experiment #3: Ultimatum
July 11
Social Preferences
Experiment #4: Crime
July 18
Social ID
Sample questions
July 25
Crime
ASS #2 due
August 1
August 8
Development

8. Textbooks Textbooks are recommended not required
There will be a number of papers covered in lectures…the relevant parts should be read
I will post what is relevant and from which article

9. Now it’s Time for our 1st Experiment!

10. Experimental Instructions
Players:
1 and 2
Actions:
each player chooses whether to attend a hockey game or the ballet
Payoffs:
Player 1
If you choose hockey and the other player chooses hockey, you receive 3 pts
If you choose hockey and the other player chooses ballet, you receive 1 pt
If you choose ballet and the other player chooses ballet, you receive 3 pts
If you choose ballet and the other player chooses hockey, you receive 0 pts
Player 2
If you choose hockey and the other player chooses ballet, you receive 0 pts
If you choose ballet and the other player chooses hockey, you receive 1 pt

11. Payoff Matrix
Player 2
Player 1
Hockey
Ballet
3 ; 3
1 ; 1
0 ; 0

12. Any guesses on the name of this game?

13. Battle of the Sexes

14. What was the point of this experiment?
To see if people prefer hockey to ballet?
To see if people can coordinate?
To see who is more likely to coordinate?
Did people learn to coordinate?
To see if people behave the way John Nash theorizes they should?

15. How do we answer these questions?
Need some basic statistical tools
Need to understand the design of the experiment
In order to understand how an experiment is designed, we first need to:
Define what an experiment is
List the ingredients to an experiment

16. What is an experiment?
An experiment is an effective procedure for the discovery of, and selection between, different possible explanations that are of equivalent or greater or lesser importance to us

17. What is the goal of experimental economics?
The goal of experimental economics is an increased understanding of real world phenomena by designing effective experiments to systematically break model assertions

18. Why are experiments useful?

19. Why are experiments useful?
Refine theories
Construct new theories
Design/redesign/wreck institutions
Test predictions
Suggests/modifies
EMPIRICS
THEORY
Tests/modifies

20. Some Reasons Economists Run Experiments
Test a theory or discriminate between theories
Public goods and free-riding
Social identity and favouritism
Explore the causes of a theory’s failure
Learning
often theories that initially perform poorly show improvement if subjects get more experience
Subject Motivation
often theories show improvement when payoffs are increased

21. Some Reasons Economists Run Experiments
3. Compare institutions
Dutch vs. English Auction
4. Evaluate policy proposals
Corruption monitoring  top-down vs. bottom-up
5. The lab as a testing ground for institutional design
Smith and market efficiency

22. What are the ingredients to an experiment?
Subjects
Often undergrad students (e.g. CalTech)
People from developing countries
Policy-based experiments
Cheaper, lower opportunity cost
Environment
Initial endowment
Preferences
Costs that motivate exchange
Institutions
Market communication
e.g. bids, offers, acceptances
Rules that govern exchange of information
Rules under which messages become binding
Observed behaviour of participants constitute the controlled variables
Controlled by monetary rewards
Defined by experimental instructions

23. What were the ingredients to our experiment?
Subjects
20 students from ECON 282
10 male, 10 female
Environment
Player 1(2) weakly preferred hockey (ballet)
Did not give monetary incentive (Big Problem)
Institutions
Players were paired up and remained in these pairs for both periods in the experiment
Players saw who their partner was
Players simultaneously chose either hockey or ballet
Players were not allowed to communicate between periods

24. How do these ingredients allow us to answer our questions?

25. 1. Which activity do people prefer?
This was not the goal of the experiment, as subjects were to have had their preferences induced by the associated payoffs
Is there a problem with labeling the two choices as hockey and ballet? YES!

26. 1. Which activity do people prefer?

27. 2. Can people Coordinate?
For this game, coordinating is considered when both players either choose hockey or ballet
How should we define coordinate?
If one group coordinates at least once in either round?
If there are more instances of groups coordinating than not (in either round)

28. 2. Can people Coordinate?

29. 3. Were there groups that were more or less likely to coordinate?
Need to compare coordination across treatments:
Female-male
Male-male
Female-female

30. 3. Were there groups that were more or less likely to coordinate?

31. 4. Did people learn to coordinate?
Understanding learning involves comparing behaviour over time
In our experiment, this means comparing coordination between the 1st round and the 2nd

32. 4. Did people learn to coordinate?

33. 5. Was Nash correct?
Nash’s theory says that players should either both play hockey or both play ballet or play some mixture of the two, with the preferred activity played more often than the other
Previous experiments suggest that after many rounds of play, subjects converge to a pattern of coordinating on both hockey and ballet
What do the results from our experiment indicate?
Not enough observations to make a statistically significant comment

34. What are some General things Economists have Learned from Experiments?
Institutions matter
Because information and incentives matter
“The Endowment Effect”
People value a good more once their property right to it has been established
This is inconsistent with standard economic theory that says a person’s willingness-to-pay for a good should equal their willingness-to-accept compensation to be deprived of the good

35. What are some General things Economists have Learned from Experiments?
3. Common information is not sufficient to yield common expectations or “knowledge”
There is no assurance that publicly announcing instructions will yield common expectations among players since each person may still be uncertain about how others will use the information
As subjects gain experience, they tend to foster common expectations
4. Information: less can be better
e.g. continuous double auction: private vs. complete and common information
Private information treatments converge to the equilibrium outcome quicker and more dependently
This is because when people have complete information they can identity more self-interested outcomes than competitive equilibria and use punishing strategies in an attempt to achieve them, which delays reaching equilibrium

36. What are some General things Economists have Learned from Experiments?
5. Dominated strategies are for playing, not eliminating
Prisoner’s dilemma: it is optimal for both to cooperate, but it is dominant for both to defect
6. Fairness: taste or expectation
People think it is unfair for firms to increase price unless it is because costs increase
But theory predicts price can increase due to shortages (caused by an increase in demand)
e.g. price of shovels increase after a blizzard

37. What are some General things Economists have Learned from Experiments?
7. Unconscious optimization in market interactions
Economic agents can achieve efficient outcomes which are not part of their intentions
Cannot rule out the possibility the unconscious is a better decision make than the conscious

38. Now it’s Time for our 2nd Experiment!

39. Experimental Instructions
Think long and hard at how far it is (in km) from Vancouver to HCMC
Write your best guess down on a piece of paper (and hand it in)
Now, take your next best guess, write it down, and hand it in

40. ANSWER
Approximate distance from Vancouver Canada to Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam is km

41. Results to be announced at the beginning of next class….