In this talk, Prof. Jordan Suter, an Environmental Economist at Oberlin College and the manager of the Oberlin Mobile Experimental Economics Laboratory (OMEEL), will discuss his experiences designing and implementing experiments in a liberal arts setting.

Economics experiments are increasingly being used by academic economists as a tool for understanding the relationship between human behavior and economic predictions. While experiments are often attractive for studying theoretical predictions and policy recommendations that are difficult or impossible to assess using real-world data, conducting a successful experiment involves a wide array of considerations.

He will specifically describe the results from experiments that he has conducted related to the use of groundwater, the implementation of markets for water quality, and an experiment involving residential energy use. In addition, he will highlight some of the key concerns that researchers conducting experiments in a liberal arts setting should consider.

Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 4:15 in Pettengill G65

Prof. Joran Suter’s visit and the talk is sponsored by a CBB Mellon Micro-Mentoring Grant and the Economics Departments at Bates College and Colby College