Sunday 4 April 2010

Condliffe Lecture

For those local folks who don't also read AntiDismal, a reminder of Canterbury's upcoming Condliffe Memorial Lecture.
2010 Condliffe Memorial Lecture

by Professor Charles Plott

Tuesday, 13 April, 5:30 - 6:30pm

Coppertop, Commerce Building, University of Canterbury.

The lecture outlines the development and use of laboratory methods, including the key discoveries and applications. The early science focused on the basic laws of supply and demand and how they operate to create a process of price discovery.The science evolved to include how information is transmitted through prices and the possibility of bubbles and market instability. More recent evolution finds the research focused on the design of competitive institutions to solve complex resource and environmental problems. The lecture focuses on the nature of the discoveries and how they are known through the application of laboratory experimental methods.

RSVP: Please RSVP, by Friday 9th April, for this event by contacting: Glenda.Lorimer@canterbury.ac.nz.
I saw Plott's address to the Virginia Political Economy meetings back around 1999 where he gave a nice demonstration of the frequency of asset bubbles in lab auction markets. Note that in a just world, Plott would have shared the Nobel for experimental economics with Vernon Smith in 2002; instead, the committee pulled another 1974 trick, partnering someone who deserved the prize but was politically problematic with a complementary partner.

4 comments:

  1. Okay, so, um, what's the goss on the 2002 Nobel?

    Sinc

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  2. @Sinc: No particular gossip. If the committee were to have someday given a prize for behavioural economics, Kahneman would have been a pretty logical pick, even if he's outside of economics proper. But it's awfully wierd to split a prize the way they did in '02: usually, splits are for findings in very related fields. So Akerlof, Stiglitz and Spence for information and market failure - that made sense. But splitting the prize in '02 seemed a lot more like the prize in '74.

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  3. Right. At the time I thought neither of them were economics. Since reading Vernon Smith's autobiography I have revised my opinion of his contribution. Sinc

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  4. http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2002.10.13/33.html

    "Had the Swedes chosen not to combine the honors for experimental and behavioral economics in a single award, presumably Plott would have shared the prize with Smith."

    ReplyDelete