[PEN-L:9162] Re: experimental economics, etc.

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

     I haven't read the LF article, but the one rather neat 
thing that comes out of a lot of the experimental econ 
stuff, is that people are not "rational" in the sense that 
neoclassical economists usually assume.  Of course this can 
be restated as the "people behave according to their 
institutional setting" argument.  Now for a lot of us and 
for most non-economists, this is no big whoop.  But it is a 
useful battering ram against the smug complacency of the 
neoclassicals, and the steady drip-drip of results 
trickling in from the experimentalists is gradually wearing 
a lot of them down.
     A good summary of a lot of the more "anomalous" 
experimental results, along with some other odd stuff, can 
be found in Richard Thaler's _The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes 
and Anomalies of Economic Life_, 1992, Princeton University 
Press.
Barkley Rosser
On Wed, 26 Mar 1997 08:33:19 -0800 (PST) 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


> Friends,
> 
> I just read na article in "Lingua Franca" by Rick Perlstein (I think he is also 
> going to do an articel on Bowles and Gintis) on experimental economics.  The 
> results of the experimentalists seem to me to be pretty thin.  They appear to 
> show that how people behave depnds in large part on the institutinal setting in 
> which they find themselves.  Can anyone on the list provide some insights into 
> this field of economics.  My alma mater (U. of Pittsburgh) is home to two of the 
> stalwarts in this field, both of whom are paid well into the six figures for 
> this stuff.
> 
> On another matter, I have read "Moo" and found the economist to be pretty 
> amusing.  Many of my students do think of schooling as something to be purchased 
> pure and simple.  They also think that I come with the purchase and have a very 
> limited right to get in the way of their obtaining the degree they have 
> purchased.  Generally speaking colleges are pretty debased places today, but is 
> this new?  Veblen was pointing this out a long time ago.
> 
> Finally, I like to read novels set in academe (like Moo).  I've read a lot of 
> them, but I am always on the lookout for new ones.  If you have any favorites, 
> let me know.
> 
> Michael Yates

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
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