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2024 Fall

aidin-hAidin Hajikhameneh

In-Class Collaboration & Lecture: "Uncertainty, Superstition, and Endogenous Group Formation: An Intergenerational Experiment"

FFC 100 "Choice in Economics and The Sandman"

October 1-31, 2024

Abstract: I report on an intergenerational lab experiment that adapts the classic public goods game by adding a computer algorithm that adjusts the payoffs. Adjustments were additive, reported separately from the contribution decisions, and unbeknownst to the subjects, random. Subjects were incentivized to advise future participants on how to play the game and reveal their beliefs about the underlying mechanism of the adjustments. In the second generation, subjects with superstitious beliefs contribute more to the public good than others. In the two supplementary treatments, the subjects had the option of sacrificing their personal gains to form new groups. Superstitious subjects were more willing than others to sacrifice and contribute to the public good. Hence, by sacrificing their personal gains, superstitious subjects endogenously form ultrasocial groups that, on average, contribute 85% of their endowments to the public good, fostering the highest level of collective welfare across all treatments.

Bio: Aidin Hajikhameneh is an Associate Professor of Economics at San Jose State University and co-director of the Spartan Experimental Economics Lab (SEEL). His research spans experimental economics, behavioral economics, and economic history, with a current emphasis on how culture, religion, and enforcement institutions impact decision-making.


brian-marein-headshotBrian Marein

In-Class Collaboration

FFC 100 "Dangerous Ideas"

October 1, 2024

Bio: Brian is an assistant professor of economics at Wake Forest University. He holds a PhD and MA in economics from the University of Colorado Boulder and a BS in economics and Spanish from the Ohio State University. Before joining Wake Forest, Brian was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Toronto. His research interests are in economic history and development, with a focus on Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States in the early 20th century.


adam-martin-headshotAdam Martin

In-Class Collaboration & Lecture: "The (Tragic) Necessity of Consumer Sovereignty"

FFC 100 "Choice in Economics and The Sandman"

September 23-27, 2024

Abstract: Markets give us what we want. Economists refer to this feature of market systems as consumer sovereignty. But it is not always a good thing. Behavioral paternalists, deep ecologists, post-liberals, and others have raised various challenges to the idea that individuals getting what they want is a good thing. This essay grants that consumers often want bad things and that it is bad when they get them, but argues that consumer sovereignty is still a (perhaps tragic) standard worth defending when evaluating market institutions. I imagine an alternative to a free market system that I call market paternalism, which is the opposite of the older idea of market socialism. Market socialism uses the tools of state planning to satisfy consumer preferences, while market paternalism uses rivalrous competition to satisfy planners’ preferences for what individuals should consume. Like market socialism, market paternalism fails to deliver the innovation and adaptation that allow free market systems to deliver the possibility of human flourishing. Consumers contribute more than just passive preferences to the market process. I contrast market paternalism with yet another alternative, market fraternalism, and deliver some good and bad news. Market fraternalism curbs some of consumers’ bad choices. It also obtains for most people in wealthy nations, and is in most circumstances institutionally identical to individualistic free markets. But it also amplifies some of our bad choices. It is still probably the best we can do.

Bio: Adam Martin is a Research Fellow at the Free Market Institute and an Associate Professor in the department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech University. His research interests focus on the intersection of philosophy, politics and economics and economic methodology, economic development and public choice. He serves as the Vice President for the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and a fellow of the Public Choice and Public Policy Project at the American Institute for Economic Research.