John_List

Magic: That is a great question--thanks for logging on! I would lean towards doing a macro experiment where I could shock the economy in certain ways and learn about how allocations and prices change. IRB would view this as too dangerous, and the FED likely would not allow me to do it either! I am looking in to this type of experiment on a more micro scale in the 2nd-life type worlds so stay tuned!

LOL. Did he receive something lower than me? Note that you should adjust grades by school when making this comparison: UW Stevens Point grades much harder than Harvard!

Great question! As the Director of Admissions and Aid in our graduate program here at Chicago for several years, this was a question that came up about many of our candidates. I actually received an A in my Real courses, but I think I still would have been denied admission to UC.

Great questions Atomic. Let me take them on one by one, but first note that randomization (randomly putting people into treatment and control groups) ends up being the great tool here: in chemistry experiments, for example, we need all of the test tubes to be clean. In economics, of course the world is quite complicated (dirty) and one could never find that clean test tube. In this case, randomization serves an important purpose: it balances the dirt across control and treatment groups. Now to the queries:

0) The most common mistakes that I see are I) not having a control group and II) running too many treatments to the power to reject null hypotheses are too low.

1) Absolutely, and we do this everyday. You can visit my U Chicago website to download tons of papers that show experiments with non-profits as well as for profits.

2) TGG is indeed very different, and very special. Unfortunately, as Chairman of the Department of Economics, and the fact that I am constantly running large scale field experiments, I just do not have time for that work just yet.

Thanks much for your queries Honey; here goes:

1) yes, in theory, but we have no solid evidence in practice. 2) I would say the new car feeling has a ton of satisfaction for many people. I would never undervalue the power of social pressure and showing others what you have as factors that motivate humans.