Summer Term 2017
Experimental methods, Lecture and tutorial
Urs Fischbacher (lecture) and Konstantin Hesler (tutorial)
Monday, 15:15-16:45, A704, lecture
Monday, 17:00-18:30, A704, tutorial according to schedule
Wednesday, 9th of August, 11AM, F315, post-exam review
Wednesday, 15th of November, 11AM, F315, post-exam review
Experiments have established their own role in economics as a source of knowledge. Experiments allow testing the behavioral assumptions underlying economic modeling; they provide tests for the empirical validity of different models and permit to establish behavioral regularities even when a theory is not yet available. Experiments also guide the researchers in the development of new theories. So, without experiments, prospect theory and social preference theories would be without relevance, since the relevance could not be proven.
This lecture gives an introduction into the experimental method in economics. It should enable you to design, plan, conduct, and analyze an economic experiment. Furthermore, it presents typical and prototypical experimental designs.
Rationality in Economic Behaviour and its Boundaries
Irenaeus Wolff
Kick-off meeting 07.04.2017 from 8:15 to 9:45 in Room tba
Starting on 10.05.2017: weekly from 8:15 to 10:45 in Room tba
Before asking about all the behavioral" elements, this course starts with the question: what is rational about economic behaviour? The preliminary answer is that people have some sort of preferences, they do form expectations about others' behaviour and they generally respond to both in a plausible direction. As a consequence, the parameters of a situation in particular, the payos generally do inuence behaviour in the direction we would expect according to standard theory. In this course, we will look at each of these `ingredients' of rational behaviour in more detail and ask just how (ir-)rational actual behaviour is. In particular, we will look at the \discovered-preference" hypothesis and imprecise preferences; at indecision due to inconmensurable valuations; at evidence for and models of expectations that are not `beliefs' in the sense of a probability distribution; at (un)awareness; and at behavioural implementation of underlying preferences. Potential additional topics include endogenous preferences and motivated beliefs.
BA Seminar: Development Policy Analysis
Sebastian Fehrler
Kick-off meeting 26.04.2017 from 17:00 to 18:30, in Room F 208.
Stata-Session: tba
Presentations: 16.06.2017 and 17.06.2017 from 10:00 to 18:00, in Room F 424
In this seminar we will study popular approaches to alleviate poverty in developing countries. In particular, we will focus on impact evaluation studies that evaluate the impact of development programs focused, for example, on education or microcredit on various outcomes, such as educational achievements, school attendance, entrepreneurial activity, or child labor. In addition to learning about these different programs the students will be made familiar with the techniques necessary to evaluate them. This will prepare them for their BA thesis in which they are expected to replicate and slightly extend an impact evaluation analysis in a published paper (many journals nowadays require the authors to make their data available on the journal website). In addition to a kick-off meeting in which the topics are introduced and the block with the presentations in July, there will be a Stata tutorial in May in which we will see what steps are necessary for such a replication undertaking.
Communication and Information Aggregation
Sebastian Fehrler
In this seminar we will study two important and active fields of research both in micro theory and in experimental economics. We will study the key models of cheap talk and information aggregation and experimental tests of these models. An important area for applications of these models is political economy. We will also closely study behavioral interpretations of the experimental results, such as lying aversion and level-k-thinking. The seminar should be interesting both for students with a primary interest in theory but also some interest in theory testing and students mainly interested in experimental economics but also with some affinity for micro theory.