Graduate Level Empirical Microeconomics
Department of Applied Economics, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University

2009 Class Resource Site

Instructor: Benjamin Chiao

Course Syllabus: [Download PDF]

Lecture 10 (Apr 27, 2009): Definitions, Theoretical and Empirical Laws

Lecture slides can be downloaded here.

Lecture 9 (Apr 20, 2009): Parametric and Non-Parametric Factorial Designs

Lecture slides can be downloaded here.

Lecture 8 (Apr 13, 2009): Literature Review Presentation

Lecture 7 (Mar 30, 2009): Non-Parametric Statistics: Multiple Treatment Comparison

Lecture slides can be downloaded here.

Lecture 6 (Mar 23, 2009): Sampling, Interviews and Surveys

Lecture slides can be downloaded here.

Lecture 5 (Mar 16, 2009): Non-Parametric Statistics for Experimenters II/ Programming Experiments using Ztree

Lecture slides of this and last lectures about statistics are combined into this.

We also went through a typical public goods experiment and how to program it using Ztree (lectures notes are here here). Please refer to the Ztree manual downloadable on the Ztree website for detailed references of commands.

Lecture 4 (Mar 9, 2009): Non-Parametric Statistics for Experimenters I / Key Experiments in Other Disciplines

Experimental economics classes at times unnecessarily focus mainly on economic experiments. Experimental techniques, however, can be used across disciplines. It is especially important to study experiments in other disciplines in the sense that such experiments have been much more thoroughly studied over many years than most economics experiments that were conducted in recent years.

We went through a series of thought and human-subject experiments, at the intersection of philosophy, pyschology and artificial intelligence, that have been inspired by the Turing Test, which attempts to test if a computer can think like human. A key follow-up thought experiment is the Chinese Room experiment. Interested students should consult the wiki links above for replies of major criticisms.

We also covered some non-parametric tests for experimenters. The slides will be merged with those of later lectures.

Lecture 3 (Mar 2, 2009): In-Class Economic Experiments

No lecture notes.

Main References:

Davis and Holt (1993) summarized the experiments we ran. See Ch. 3 (p.125-172), Ch.5 (p.241-275), and Ch. 7 (p. 422-6).

The first laboratory double auctions were reported in Smith (1962), "An Experimental Study of Competitive Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, 70(3), 111-137.

The first ultimatum experiment was reported in Guth et al. (1982), "An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 3, 367-8.

The first dictator experiment was reported in Forsythe et al. (1988), "Fairness in Simple Bargaining Games," Games and Economic Behavior, 6, 347-369. It also replicated the ultimatum experiments.

The University of Iowa's Iowa Electronic Markets Web is a well known prediction market. For their results, see Forsythe et al. (1992) "Forecasting the 1988 Presidential Election: A Field Experiment," in M. Isaac (ed.) Research in Experimental Economics, Vol. 4, JAI Press.

Lecture 2 (Feb 23, 2009): The Methods of Experiments

Lecture slides can be downloaded here. Before Lecture 3, registered students must email the instructor (benjamin.chiao@gmail.com) a one-paragraph description of a preliminary research question you want to explore in this class.

Main References:

Rudolf Carnap (1974). "The Experimental Method", An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, pp 40-47. Full text available for free at books.google.com

H. Russell Bernard. Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Sage Publications, Inc., 2000. Ch. 4

Lecture 1 (Feb 16, 2009): Overview: On the Methods of Science, Social Science and Economics

Lecture slides can be downloaded here.

Main References:

H. Russell Bernard. Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Sage Publications, Inc., 2000. Ch. 1

Ernest Nagel, "Assumptions in Economic Theory," American Economic Review, May 1963.

Online excerpt of Karl Popper's book Science: Conjectures and Refutations. URL:
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~fotoole/321.1/popper.html

Milton Friedman, "The Methodology of Positive Economics," Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago, 1953).

Armen Alchian, "Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory," Journal of Political Economy, June 1950.

Phillip Haile, Ali Hortascu and Grigory Kosenok (2008): "On the Empirical Content of Quantal Response Equilibrium," American Economic Review, 98(1), March 2008, 180--200.