Posted by Gerhard Ortner on May 15, 1997 at 05:16:51:
In Reply to: Experiment no. 6 posted by Jan-Eric Nilsson on March 18, 1997 at 04:40:35:
: Hi,
: Since I am now wrapping up the course, I would like to share some of the lessons we have learned with other readers of the discussion group.
: We have primarily been interested to use experiment 6 in order to clarify the significance of economic tools to handle externalities. We first ran a few markets with experiment 1 to make the students used to the standard double auction stuff; then came experiment 6. Our main conclusion is, never the less, that it is difficult to bump right into one specific chapter of the book in this way. Students don't have the training to realise what really takes place, in particular the dichotomy between redemption values and theoretical predictions on the one hand and actual outcome in the sessions on the other seems to bee difficult to grasp.
We start from the beginning (only skip experiment 4) and I found that students become quite familiar with all market rules etc. very quick. Are were no problems in doing experiment 6 and the following discussion was very vivacious.
: Some detail questions/remarks: I found it useful to summarise the results for the students by plotting experimental trade against the predicted levels on the same sheet. This made it obvious that outcomes iterated towards predictions in a way which did not come out immediately from the textbook. Is this done during previous experiments? If not, I suggest that it should be.
We do it, and it seems a pretty good idea, cause students get a direct comparison between experiments and theory.
: In summary, we look forward to using major parts of the book for our micro course this fall.
I'm sure we will repeat most of the experiments next year, too.
Gerhard