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Andronicus

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Everything posted by Andronicus

  1. Look at the research of the relevant faculty to see what sounds more interesting to you. Cason (Purdue) and Eckel (TAMU) are both big names in experimental who should be good advisors. But their research interests are different. Cason does a lot of stuff related to game theory such as contests/auctions and coordination. Eckel has a lot of work on charitable giving and gender differences. Also, look at recent placements in experimental from each program. Purdue has produced some well-known people like Roman Sheremeta not too long ago.
  2. I was referring to Mark Walker. And yes, they seem similar in strength in your area of interest. I don't know about attrition at either place.
  3. Both of them have very good people in experimental and behavioral economics. I am not familiar with the particulars of their PhD programs, but I can think of examples of co-authoring with students by Walker (Arizona) and Noussair (Tilburg). Also, I agree with pch that 19 new candidates is not an issue. Tilburg has a big department with many faculty members (not to mention a separate department of econometrics), so I would expect the student/faculty ratio to be fine. Academically, both seem like good options for you. Of course, if you have preferences over location and/or weather, they could hardly be more different.
  4. If you have a Nobel winner and a JBC winner willing to write letters for you, they are the ones who should be advising you about this.
  5. When it occasionally comes up, I tell people that getting a PhD doesn't mean you're smarter than everyone else, know everything, or even know everything about economics. It means you spend a lot of time studying a very narrow topic and add something new to that topic. Basically this: The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
  6. It depends on what type of behavioral/experimental economist you are. Behavioral economists doing empirical work with non-experimental data (and perhaps field experimenters) should be competitive for most of the same jobs as other applied micro types. For lab experimenters, it can be more limited, as there are usually only a few jobs posted specifically for lab experiments, and some of them are post-docs. It may be necessary in some cases to make it clear that you can work somewhere that doesn't have a dedicated experimental lab -- basically all you need is a computer lab you can book for a couple of hours on occasion and a little support from IT to set things up. For teaching jobs, classroom experiments are a great educational tool, not just for behavioral economics but for micro and macro principles, for public economics, IO, game theory, etc. Some liberal arts schools are aware of this and seek it out, but in other cases the candidate needs to highlight this. At Ohio State, students in experimental economics are often advised to add another dimension to their research beyond experiments alone to help make them more marketable on the job market. Usually this added dimension is theory at OSU, but it doesn't have to be.
  7. Purdue and Pitt are good places for behavioral and experimental, but I don't think I would choose them over Michigan. There are several behavioral and experimental economists at Michigan, though some of them are in the School of Information (Chen, Rosenblat) or in the Ross School of Business (Leider). Now that I've talked up Michigan, let me get the taste out of my mouth: Go Bucks!
  8. Somewhere to start on local public goods: Only for my own neighborhood?: Preferences and voluntary provision of local and global public goods Leadership and influence: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment on local public good provision Endogenous group formation with public goods is also related to Tiebout, e.g.: http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/48/3/356.short Stackelberg with cheap talk: http://sal.aalto.fi/publications/pdf-files/mham12b.pdf
  9. Paul Milgrom at Stanford for theory. Myerson is at Chicago. Ohio State (Kagel, Levin, Ye) and Maryland (Ausubel, Cramton, Ozbay) are good for theory and experiments.
  10. Ohio State is good in theoretical IO. They have some new young faculty in empirical IO as well, but no one senior. They recently lost Marvel to retirement, and Lewis went to Clemson.
  11. Behavioral economics and experimental economics are not the same thing, but they are closely related, and a researcher in one should have a strong understanding of the other. Many, probably most, experimental economists are also behavioral economists to some degree (but I include myself in that, so maybe it's just false-consensus bias :playful:). If you're definitely interested in experimental, you can add to those already mentioned Texas A&M, Arizona, and possibly Florida State and George Mason depending on your background. And yes, UCSB is strong in experimental.
  12. I hadn't heard of it either until my 2nd or 3rd year of grad school, as it wasn't covered in first-year micro (I don't think it's even in MWG). I wouldn't say the economics literature "has it covered," as there is still plenty of work to do. One of the main difficulties (with behavioral economics in general really) is how context-specific behavior seems to be. Individuals may behave pro-socially in one setting and anti-socially in another setting, for example. There are many theoretical models that explain behavior well in one context, but not another. We realize from experimental econ, psych, etc. that context matters, but we don't yet have a general theory of how context matters so that we can explain behavior in many contexts at once. Psychologists, sociologists, etc. have done a lot of important work on these issues, and I think their contributions will continue to be important, especially since the contexts of interest to economists are often not the same as those of interest to other disciplines. But I think non-economists are less concerned with finding a general theory than economists are. We aren't satisfied with explaining behavior piecemeal with many different models, but we've got a long way to go to reach a more general understanding of economic behavior.
  13. There's plenty of literature in behavioral and experimental economics on reciprocity. Experiments related to reciprocity include gift exchange (often in the context of labor markets with incomplete contracts), the trust game, public goods games with punishment, and the ultimatum game, among others. On the theory side, reciprocity is often modeled using psychological game theory (payoffs depend directly on beliefs about intentions) as in Rabin's fairness equilibrium, among others. There is still a lot of research going on in this area, but the economics literature is substantial.
  14. Why? Certainly there are other considerations (such as fairness or reciprocity) but opportunity cost still matters. For example, we are moving soon, and I have a comparative advantage in tasks that require heavy lifting or reaching high places, while she has other comparative advantages such as packing fragile things securely. On other things, we have different psychological costs (e.g. I hate dealing with bureaucracy and paperwork, she hates dealing with household pests). Sometimes it's as simple as one of us having some work obligation on a particular day when the other is more flexible to take care of household matters. I certainly wouldn't advocate for blind application of economic theory without consideration of social rules, but the basic principles are still useful.
  15. At this point, it's completely ingrained into my way of thinking. My wife gets weary of how much I use economic terminology and reasoning in everyday conversation. In decision making, I'm always talking about opportunity costs and asking her to consider the next best alternative, ignore sunk costs, etc. I even occasionally use concepts like incentive compatibility in conversation. And she knows what I mean (from listening to me -- she is not an economist) so just using the jargon seems the best way to express myself. Some times she thinks I am being pedantic, but that's not my intention.
  16. I run experiments in labs and get results and stuff.
  17. Congrats! Jim Andreoni and Vince Crawford are big names in experimental Econ. And they've had some great placements in experimental as well (especially Sprenger at Stanford). Plus, SD has the best weather on earth. UCSD is definitely a great option for you.
  18. First year micro theory courses cover standard material from MWG, while micro theory field courses take you closer to the frontier of current research, and also give more depth on foundational ideas. Specific topics vary by professor interests. A large part of my theory field sequence was more advance applications of game theory and mechanism design to contracts and auctions. We also spent a lot of time on non-expected utility models. At OSU at least, most students in labor Econ don't do much theory. But there's a big overlap between IO and theory. It may be different other places due to faculty interests.
  19. The median number of publications for Econ PhDs is zero.
  20. Glad you enjoyed the visit. I was at the dinner the first night, so we probably spoke then. But I'm happy to answer any additional questions you or anyone else might have that can help in the decision process.
  21. Given your options, my (entirely unbiased :playful:) opinion is that you should choose OSU. It's very good in experimental/behavioral, and also probably the best program overall (roughly tied with UVA). In terms of math, there is a lot of course, but I don't know how it compares to other similarly-ranked places. A lot (but not all) of the experiments here tend to be quite theory-driven, so it certainly helps if you have some interest in theory (especially game theory). You'll see behavioral/psychological stuff in the two experimental classes (Kagel and Levin's auctions class and Kagel and Coffman's experimental class). Our weekly theory/experimental discussion group is now also officially a class, and it's a great venue to get feedback on your ideas and work in progress. There is also a useful class in the psych dept on judgement and decision making that behavioral Econ students take. See my PM for more info.
  22. Thanks! I thought about starting a self-congratulatory thread, but decided to be ever-so-slightly more subtle. :playful:
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