HE 4013: Experimental Economics
Nanyang Technological University
2021-2022, Semester 1
Instructor: He Tai-Sen
Email address: TS.HE@ntu.edu.sg
Office Hours: By appointment
I. Course Description and Learning Objectives:
Experimental Economics is one of the fastest growing fields in economics today.
Experimental work has been conducted in almost all fields of economics including
Industrial Organization, Game Theory, Public Finance, and even Macroeconomics.
This course will introduce you the experimental methods in Economics and
discuss how these methods can be applied to study topics in Behavioural Economics,
such as social preference, intertemporal choice and decision-making under uncertainty.
After taking this course, I expect you to be able to: 1) assess whether a topic of
your interest is a good research question and state the hypotheses you want to test; 2)
design an appropriate experiment to answer the research question; 3) conduct an
economic experiment in a laboratory or field setting; 4) analyze experimental data
collected; 5) understand how experimental methods are applied to study various
important topics in economics. Ultimately, I hope you will be able to appreciate welldesigned economic experiments and communicate interesting scientific findings with
people.
II. Method of Instruction:
Lecture: 12:30–14:30 on Thursdays @ LT 20
Tutorial: 10:30–12:30 on Thursdays @ LT 20
III. Grading:
Participation, Assigned Paper Presentation, Quiz
Term Project
Final Exam
25%
25%
50%
100%
IV. Recommended readings:
Textbook:
1. Market, Games, and Strategic Behavior by Charles A. Holt.
2. Research Methods Design and Analysis by Larry B. Christensen, R. Burke
Johnson and Lisa A. Turner.
Chapters from the above textbooks are compiled into 1 customized textbook titled
Experimental Economics, ISBN: 9789814598101. Available at bookstore.
3. Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Experimental Economics
edited by Arthur Schram and Aljaz Ule
Assigned Papers:
You will need to read the following assigned papers. This might be difficult for many
of you. You can avoid the technical parts but please try your best to understand
these papers. (Please be noted that this is a tentative list.)
Tip: Reading academic papers may be a new experience for you. You can find some tips
here: http://www.sagepub.com/bjohnsonstudy/howtoarticle.htm
1. Charness, G., & Gneezy, U. (2009). Incentives to Exercise. Econometrica, 77(3),
909–931.
2. Cherry, T. L., Frykblom, P., & Shogren, J. F. (2002). Hardnose the Dictator. The
American Economic Review, 92(4), 1218–1221.
3. Kosse, F., Deckers, T., Pinger, P., Schildberg-Horisch, H., and Falk, A. (2020). The
Formation of Prosociality: Causal Evidence on the Role of Social Environment.
Journal of Political Economy, 128:2, 434-467.
4. Drouvelis, M., & Grosskopf, B. (2016). The Effects of Induced Emotions on ProSocial Behaviour. Journal of Public Economics, 134, 1–8.
5. Rand, D. G., Greene, J. D., & Nowak, M. A. (2012). Spontaneous giving and
calculated greed. Nature. 489, 427–430.
6. Cohn, A., Fehr, E., & Marechal, M. A. (2014). Business culture and dishonesty in
the banking industry. Nature, 516, 86–89.
7. Ifcher, J., & Zarghamee, H. (2011). Happiness and Time Preference : The Effect of
Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment. American Economic Review,
101(7), 3109–3129.
8. Chen, I. Josie, He, Tai-Sen, & Riyanto, Yohanes E. (2019). The effect of language
on economic behavior: Examining the causal link between future tense and time
preference in the lab, 120: 103307.
9. Cohn, Alain, Jan Engelmann, Ernst Fehr, and Michel André
Maréchal. (2015). Evidence for Countercyclical Risk Aversion: An Experiment
with Financial Professionals. American Economic Review, 105 (2): 860-85.
10. Andersson, O., Holm, H. J., Tyran, J., & Wengström, E. (2016). Deciding for Others
Reduces Loss Aversion. Management Science, 62(1), 29–36.
V. Tentative Schedule
Week 1: Introduction to Behavioural and Experimental Economics (No Tutorials)
Week 2: Social Preference (No Tutorials)
Week 3: Social Preference (A/P presentation 26 Aug)
Week 4: Social Preference (A/P presentation 2 Sep)
Week 5: Experimental Methods I: How to Design an (A/P presentation, 9 Sep)
Week 6: Experimental Methods I: How to Design an Experiment (A/P presentation 16 Sep)
Week 7: Experimental Method II: How to Conduct an Experiment (A/P presentation 23 Sep)
Recess Week
Week 8: Quiz (No A/P presentation)
Week 9: Time Preference (A/P presentation 14 Oct)
Week 10: Risk Preference (A/P presentation 21 Oct)
Week 11: Risk Preference (A/P presentation 28 Oct)
Week 12: Public Holiday
Week 13: Review
Final Exam: 19 Nov (Friday) 2:30pm