Pop Psychology

Featured in The Atlantic, Dec. 2008, by Reshma Hussam, Dr. David Porter, Dr. Vernon Smith

IN THESE UNCERTAIN economic times, we’d all like a guaranteed investment. Here’s one: it pays a 24-cent dividend every four weeks for 60 weeks, 15 dividends in all. Then it disappears. Unlike a bond, this security has no redemption value. It simply provides guaranteed dividends. It involves no tricky derivatives or unknown risks. And it carries absolutely no danger of default. What would you pay for it?... View full article

Dec. 5th, Hillard Kaplan Ph.D. - Evolution of Aging

Dr. Hillard Kaplan earned his M.A. in Anthropology at Columbia University. He was awarded his PhD. in Anthropology at the University of Utah. His current empirical research, with support from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes on Aging, investigates aging and the life course among traditional peoples who have had little exposure to western medicine and western lifestyles. This includes a seven-year study among the Tsimane native South Americans in lowland Bolivia. Parallel to this empirical program, he remains engaged in the development of mathematical models of aging. Dr. Hillard Kaplan is currently a professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He is also an external faculty member in the behavioral science program at the Santa Fe Institute, and actively participates in seminars applying quantitative models to human behavior. Watch lecture.

Tsimane project: http://www.unm.edu/~tsimane/

A leading member of Chapman’s new Economic Science Institute, John Dickhaut uses path-breaking laboratory experiments to understand why we make the economic choices that we do – and how these choices profoundly shape our world. Professor Dickhaut’s current work seeks to understand the origins of the modern complex economic society using experiments in combination with medical brain imaging systems, experimental psychology, and anthropology. Dickhaut argues that the original mechanism for conducting trade is the brain itself and as more economic opportunities emerged the brain needed help such as written contracts as well as methods for assessing the reputation of trading partners including credit histories and record keeping. Failure to understand this relationship can potentially inflict unintended consequences on the economic environment. Recent economic collapses may partially reflect this problem.

John Dickhaut is a Professor of Economics and Accounting at Chapman University . A prominent figure in the emerging field of neuroeconomics, Professor Dickhaut is a dynamic speaker known for his quick wit and ability to make economics both accessible and engaging. Watch lecture

Oct. 24th, Abel Winn Ph.D. - Framing Effects in Two-Side Clock Auctions

Dr. Abel Winn earned a B.A. in Economics and History from Hillsdale College in 2001. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University in 2005. In 2004 he acted as an independent consultant for the Commonwealth of Virginia, assisting in the design, testing and evaluation of multiple auction mechanisms for the sale of Nitrous Oxide emission allowances. From 2004 to 2005 Dr. Winn was a Senior Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he reported on the status, compliance and effectiveness of various policies for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the U.S. Air Force. Since 2005 Dr. Abel Winn has held the position of Director of Experimental Economics at the Market-Based Management Institute in Wichita, Kansas. His recent research includes the performance of one-sided and two-sided multiple unit clock auctions, expectation formation in a stochastic environment, and the intersection of psychological factors and agency theory. Watch lecture

Oct. 21st, Surviving Until Next Time

Featured on Forbes.com, Oct. 21st, 2008 by Vernon L. Smith

We are in the painful crash phase of the largest U.S. housing bubble on record. Housing prices are rapidly declining from the unsustainable levels to which they had grown from 1997 to 2006. Runaway expectations of rising prices, coupled with low interest rates, brought the dangerous easing of traditionally conservative down-payment requirements--the old style capitalistic mechanism by which home buyers and bank lenders are both protected from unpredictable declines in the value of homes, or the capacity of home owners to make loan payments...View the edited and expanded article (PDF). View related article

Oct. 17th, Eric Schoenberg Ph.D. - Relative Wealth Concerns and Asset Bubbles: An Experimental Approach

Professor Schoenberg currently teaches behavioral economics at Columbia Business School, where his research focuses on the psychology of money, with particular emphasis on intergenerational wealth transfers and behavior in financial markets. Previously, he was Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer of Broadview International, a boutique investment bank offering merger and acquisition advisory services to Information Technology companies. Before that, he served as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, an MBA from the Wharton School, where he was a Palmer Scholar, an MSE in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and an AB in Biology from Harvard. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Mondo Publishing, a children’s educational publishing company; a Trustee of the Rubin Museum of Art; an Overseer of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology; Chairman of the Endowment Committee of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey; and Managing Partner of Holly Glen Partners, an investment fund. Watch lecture

Oct. 9th, There's No Easy Way Out of the Bubble

Featured in The Wall Street Journal, 2008 By Vernon L. Smith

Since 2006 the U.S. economy has exhibited the features of a crash following a classic bubble.

But the bulge was not precipitated by general stock-market excesses nor by an economy-wide bubble-crash. The excesses were focused in the housing and related financial markets -- banks, mortgage, and insurance companies -- starting in 1998 and accelerating to 2006. This created the mother of all housing bubbles…

Oct. 3rd, Don't Let Google Freeze the Airways

Featured in The Wall Street Journal by Thomas W. Hazlett & Vernon L. Smith

Google is now pushing a "free the airwaves" campaign, rallying to open TV band frequencies for new wireless services. This is a superb idea, one suggested by South Dakota Republican Sen. Larry Pressler in 1996, just before he was targeted by broadcasters and defeated for re-election…

Oct. 3rd, Peter Bossaerts Ph.D. - Exploring the Nature of "Trading Intuition"

Peter Bossaerts received a licentiate and doctorandus degree in applied economics from the University of Antwerp in Belgium. After coursework towards a Master's in statistics at the Free University Brussels, he changed to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he finished his PhD in Management (Finance) under Richard Roll. His first appointment as assistant professor was at Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration. In 1990, Peter Bossaerts moved to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he promoted to become Professor of Finance, and ultimately the William D. Hacker Professor of Economics and Management. He was also Executive Officer for the Social Sciences and Chair of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences. Peter Bossaerts is at present at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) as Swiss Finance Institute Professor, chairing the Laboratory for Decision Making under Uncertainty. While his research and publications have encompassed many areas of theoretical and empirical finance, his present work is focused on experimental finance. This work borrows tools from many relevant fields, such as decision theory, general equilibrium theory, game theory, cognitive psychology, and decision neuroscience. His work has been published in top journals in finance, economics and neuroscience. Peter Bossaerts has taught undergraduate, MBA, PhD and executive classes at various places across the world. He is or has been on the board of many academic journals, such as the Review of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and Mathematical Finance.

Oct. 2nd, 2008- Presentation by Vernon L. Smith on Faith in Science and Religion given at the Town and Gown Luncheon at Chapman University . Watch presentation

September 2008

Sept. 27th & 28th

Sept. 16th, 2008 Free lectures at Chapman’s new Economic Science Institute

Chapman University ’s new Economic Science Institute will present a series of free lectures by visiting scholars on a wide range of developments in the field of economic science. The institute, under the direction of Stephen Rassenti, Ph.D. and including Nobel laureate Vernon L. Smith, was founded last year at Chapman when the university attracted a distinguished five-member group of economic scientists from George Mason University . The series is co-presented by the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics (IFREE), founded by Smith in 1997.View the full O.C. Register article and lineup of lectures

Sept. 15th, 2008 Thomas A. Rietz Ph.D. - Product market efficiency: The bright side of myopic, uninformed, and passive external finance

Thomas Rietz earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Iowa and served on the faculty at Northwestern University prior to returning to the University of Iowa as a faculty member of the Finance Department in 1993. In addition to being an award winning teacher, Professor Rietz has received several research awards and authored a number of academic articles published in places such as: The American Political Science Review, Blackwell's Encycolpaedia of Financial Economics, Cuardernos Economicos de ICE, Economics and Politics, Information Systems Frontiers, the International Journal of Game Theory, the International Journal of Forecasting, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Management Science, Performance Improvement Quarterly, the Review of Financial Studies and Social Choice and Welfare. His work has been the subject of many popular press features appearing in such places as: Barron’s, Bloomberg News and Radio, CBS Market Watch, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chronicle of Higher Education, C-SPAN, The Financial Times, Good Morning America, CNNfn, Reuters, National Public Radio, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, among others.

Professor Rietz uses a combination of theoretical, empirical and experimental work to address his two primary research areas: 1) financial markets and decisions and 2) elections and voting decisions. He served three terms as the section head for finance on the executive committee of the Economic Science Association, the professional organization for experimental economists. Professor Rietz is an Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) director and uses the IEM in both research and teaching.

Professor Rietz regularly teaches Commercial Banking and Introductory Financial Management to undergraduates and Financial Management to MBA students.

Dialogue with Doti & Dodge:
"The Father of Experimental Economics, Part I"

Dialogue with Doti & Dodge:
"The Father of Experimental Economics, Part II"

July 9th, 2008 DayBreak OC- KDOC

Nobel Prize Winner Teachers OC Kids

July 8th, 2008 The Orange County Register
Nobel Prize winner puts teens to the test
High school students learn economics by experiment at Chapman University