Preface

Welcome to Experiments in Economics. Our purpose is to generate a personal connection between economic theory and students’ individual experiences.

This material is a contextualized introduction to the enriching practice of running life games in class with pedagogical purposes. This manual is meant to be a first ready-to-use resource with related content to the CORE The Economy’s units and concepts. We hope this material will serve as a window to the wide universe of external resources, platforms and ideas developed by the international community of experiments for teaching.

The contents presented in here are thought to be a complement to The Economy as a textbook in an economics course. Even more, each activity has direct references to specific unit sections in the book. Nevertheless, each chapter is self-contained with its own materials, brief theoretical context and instructions. Please feel free to adapt any version of this base experiments to your particular interests: to illustrate different concepts or motivate different debates. These materials are designed to minimize the required work a teacher has to do to implement life games in class. Therefore, Experiments in economics is an easily adaptable strategy to innovatively enrich economics related learning environments.

Experiments are a powerful teaching tool. It has been found that direct learning experiences increase team creativity and component divergence (Gino, Argote, Miron-Spektor and Todorova, 2010). Both abilities are fundamental to create informed and yet innovative explanations to the complexity of economic phenomena. Experiments provide students this direct experience with strategic interdependence of social interactions through very simple games that capture essential elements of the theory. On the other hand, students directly empathize with the agents studied by economic models when participating in experiments. This directs them to wonder about the external validity of the theoretical frameworks. Therefore, experiments help students learn with a curious and engaging perspective from day one. Finally, experimental experiences may give students invaluable intuitions to critically evaluate between different models. More than everything else, experiments make the learning process an enjoyable and memorable life experience.

This book is organized in a modular way. Each chapter contains a base version of a classical experiment. The first section presents a list of concepts reinforced by the activity and a brief theoretical introduction. The detailed models are referenced as units in The Economy. Then a description of the expected results is presented. Next, each chapter contains a detailed protocol to be executed in class as a general guideline. Materials, prepared tables, and resources are provided to print and use. Some experiments may require cellphones or computers; and, other experiments have a paper-based design. Finally, you will find a suggested format to present results to the class and discuss the experience based on a list of questions. These considerations are methodologically oriented to think about the external validity of the exercises, to conjecture plausible mechanisms behind the observations, and to apply the theory to hypothetical variations of the game.

In conclusion, Experiments in economics is an introductory manual oriented to complement theoretical formation through direct experience. A deeper understanding of the models and a different learning environment builds solid foundations for more advanced courses and the exercise of modeling real life problems. Please remember this is a select sample of an entire set of materials developed by the pedagogical experimental community. We strongly encourage you to keep looking for new class projects that will change the way students first approach to economic theory.

We thank the Vice-chancellor’s office for research at the Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia for providing the funding for this project.

The CORE Team
August 2018