Houser, Daniel
Johnston, Carl A.
Oprea, Ryan
Porter, David
Houser, Daniel, Professor of Economics at George Mason University.A widely published experimentalist who specializes in experimetrics, Dr. Houser is also lead author of the most heavily cited scientific field study of reputations and auctions. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics, with a focus on Bayesian Econometrics, at the University of Minnesota.Read Dr. Houser’s report on his work on the IFREE-funded “Methods” Grant
Johnston, Carl A., IFREE-assisted post-doctoral research fellow at ICES/GMUCarl A. Johnston is an IFREE-assisted post-doctoral research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science at George Mason University where he studies health care and public economic institutions using economic laboratory and agent-based computer simulation techniques. He received his Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2007. His dissertation, “Medicare Part D: an institutional analysis,” used experimental and agent-based computer simulation techniques to examine aspects of the program’s design as an economic system. Current work focuses on health care finance, but also includes economic system design for defense agencies, foreign governments, and public utilities. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Johnston was a research associate at Harvard Business School, and was a former journalist. He received his B.A. from Stanford in 1982.The cost of a laboratory experiment is tiny compared with the costs it can help avoid. Recently, one state launched a major initiative to expand health insurance coverage. Within months, unexpected market reactions rendered the program financially unstable, forcing the state to abandon the idea. Carl has no doubt that the state could have avoided many pitfalls by running laboratory experiments beforehand and paying attention to the results. One motive for experimental economics is to enable researchers to “wind-tunnel” test ideas in the laboratory before unleashing them on the public. Failures in the laboratory help prevent failures in the public arena.
Most recently, Carl has been working with Stephen Rassenti on research that explores the effects of employer-and individual-mandates on small businesses for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). The study explores the trade-offs between coverage and economic activity and how different sectors of the economy experience mandates in different ways. Large businesses, for example, can take some insurance mandates in stride because it helps them run their businesses better. Small businesses, on the other hand, tend to get hurt because they lack various advantages of scale. In the nine mandate regimes examined so far, alone or in combination, some stakeholders are made better off, and others worse off, but none makes everyone better off—and some actually make everyone worse off.
Oprea, Ryan, University of California Santa Cruz.Ryan Oprea was an IFREE-sponsored doctoral student at GMU-ICES from 2001-2006 where he also served as research assistant to Professor Vernon Smith. In 2006 he took a position as Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He serves as Associate Director of Daniel Friedman’s LEEPS lab, one of the oldest continuously operating experimental economics labs in the country.Ryan has been doing research on a number of topics ranging from the very fundamental to the very applied. One recent line of fundamental research focuses on how subjects learn to be patient in investment settings. It turns out that experimental subjects use ingenious and simple rules that lead them to adjust their patience over time to nearly optimal levels. On the applied side of the spectrum, Ryan recently completed work with Dan Friedman on a project for the Environmental Defense Fund to design and experimentally test market oriented solutions to over-fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
With fellow IFREE-sponsored Graduate Workshop Alum, Sean Crockett, and experimental economics pioneer Charlie Plott, Ryan is working on new research studying how prices evolve when markets are out of equilibrium. (Sean Crocket was also an IFREE-sponsored Pre-Doc Visitor at ICES/GMU in 2004.)
Another new research program with Dan Friedman examines an emerging frontier in experimental game theory: games played in continuous time. Continuous time is often a more realistic setting for studying strategic problems and in these settings outcomes often differ dramatically from those in classical discrete time settings.
Some of Ryan’s latest work, funded by an IFREE research grant, is examining how and to what degree markets help solve problems created by imperfect rationality. In particular he is looking at whether classical market mechanisms such as specialization and wealth dynamics can prevent or mitigate the inefficiencies often associated with irrational agents. Of IFREE Ryan says, “It is hard to exaggerate the role IFREE had in my development as an experimental economics. IFREE supported me through graduate school, funded several of my early projects and continues to support some of the research I’m most excited about.”
Porter, David, Professor of Economics at Chapman University.Dr. Porter’s main research interest is economic systems design. He was the principle designer of the Cassini Resource Exchange that allowed scientists on the mission to Saturn to barter resources over the Internet. He also helped design and develop the auction that is used to trade emission right portfolios in the Southern California basin, the Sears Logistic auction, StateStreet’s BondConnect market, Virginia’s new source auction for NoX, and the CIRO information market on river flows in Australia.