A Big Thinkers Event: Laboratory Methods in Economics as a Tool in the Design of New Market Processes

Abstract
The lecture will focus on information aggregation mechanisms, what they do, how they work and how they can be improved. Early mechanisms focused on market types of organization. Recent work is based on parimutuel type organizations, modified to improve the information aggregation properties as opposed to the entertainment and gambling features. The seminar will focus on the basic behavioral principles as found in laboratory experiments, and how they influenced the designs. A recent field application will be summarized.

About Charles Plott
Dr. Plott’s research is focused on the basic principles of process performance and the use of those principles in the design of new, decentralized processes to solve complex problems. The contributions include over 180 scientific papers containing many discoveries of the properties of market adjustments, the influence or institutional detail on performance, information in markets, behavior in the presence of externalities and public goods, together with additional seminal papers in political science. His contributions include the development of widely applied laboratory tools, programs and techniques and participation in the design and implementation of computerized market mechanisms for allocating complex items (such as the markets for pollution permits in Southern California, the FCC auction of licenses for Personal Communication Systems, the auctions for electric power in California, the allocation of landing rights at the major U.S. airports, access of private trains to public railway tracks, access to natural gas pipelines, the allocation of licenses for offshore aquaculture sites, the combinatorial sale of fleets of vehicles and the application of complex procurements). Dr. Plott has worked extensively in the areas of axiomatic social choice and voting theory, industrial organization (including the economics of networks), finance, information economics (including the design and application of information aggregation mechanisms) and the design of economic processes. He was the founder of the Caltech Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Political Science and is its Director. He has contributed extensively to the development and application of a laboratory experimental methodology in the fields of economics and political science.

Back See All Big Thinker Events