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Using experiments in economics involves bringing student subjects into a laboratory environment.
Assigning them a role, in a real economic situation, having them play out that role in a way where their payments,
the amount of money that they're going to earn in the experiment, depends on the decisions that they make.
So it's a real economic environment.
Once they go ahead and play their role, receive their payment, then as researchers we come back later on,
take a look at the behavior that they exhibited during that experiment and use it to test various economic theories.
I originally started thinking about
experimental economics from the research perspective when I was a graduate student at Purdue University.
My thesis advisor was an experimental economist
and he started getting me thinking about ways that I might use this approach in my own research
as I was working on my thesis.
The more I started to get involved in conducting experiments myself for research purposes,
doing additional reading, I discovered that the experimental methodology can be applied
in a classroom environment, in a way that makes students active learners.
Gets them involved, up out of their seats, gets the blood moving.
And gives them an opportunity to play out the role of economic decision makers.
So much of what goes on in introductory economics classes involves students sitting and listening to the professor,
and this is a chance for them to actually be participants, for them to be researchers for a change.
As I said, the idea of just getting out of your seat, to start with, is fun.
And so one of the big areas that we as economists face, right of the bat, is getting students interested in the material.
And there's no better way to be interested than to be an actual participant.
Instead of having you think about abstract buyers and sellers, all the sudden now you are a buyer or seller,
and you have to make decisions where the choices that you make are going to impact how much money you earn,
whether it's fictitious money or extra credit points or real dollars.
I've really thought long and hard about making specific changes to the course so that
the experiments don't feel like just an add-on to something else that I wouldn't otherwise be doing.
When I first started out, I started slow, which I think is probably not a bad idea.
I added a couple experiments to my already existing introductory microeconomics course.
It went over pretty well, and so I figured that it would be appropriate to try to incorporate a few more.
And as I did that, I really felt like the course needed to have a focus on this methodology.
And in the last couple of years, as I've taught additional sections of microeconomics,
I attempted to incorporate and build the whole course around the experimental methodology
so that we start off, on the very first day, with a very simple short experiment.
And we end, on the very last day, with a description and a...