Professor Catherine Eckel was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to host a conference in honor of Elinor Ostrom. The topic of the conference will be social dilemmas, an area which Ostrom was deeply involved. The conference will feature a collection of some of the brightest experimental economist in that area and will take place at California Institute of Technology from February 7-9, 2013.

Graduate students Haley Harwell, Ravi Hanumara, Zhengzheng Wang, and Wei Zhan have all joined the Department of Economics at Texas A&M, transferring from the University of Texas at Dallas. They will be an integral part of the graduate student staff of the ERL.

It is with great sadness that we note Elinor Ostrom, experimental economist and Nobel laureate has passed. She will be sorely missed. Click here for more details about her life and legacy.

As part of the Economic Research Laboratory´s Humanities and Social Science Enhancement of Research Capacity grant, Xiaoyuan Wang was hired today as the first ever research assistant for the laboratory. His job duties are to assist all faculty and graduate students when using the laboratory for both teaching and research purposes. His position will greatly aide those unfamiliar with using the laboratory, and should increase both faculty and graduate student involvement in the laboratory. Outside of experimental research, Xiaoyuan also studies consumer behavior, specifically consumer´s preference for variety.

Professor Catherine C. Eckel has accepted an offer to join the Economics Department at Texas A&M University, leaving the University of Texas at Dallas. She will serve as a chaired professor in the department and also run the newly created interdisciplinary center on behavioral economics and public policy. A world renowned scholar in the field of experimental economics for thirty years, she has published over 70 journal articles and been part of numerous grants totaling over 5 million dollars. A current research focus of her research involves the experimental measurement of preferences for economic risk taking, future orientation, cooperation and trust for residents of low-income south Dallas neighborhoods, and the relationship between those preferences and economic behavior.

Assistant Professor Jonathan Meer was awarded a SEED grant from the college of Liberal Arts for future experimental work. The work coauthored with Assistant Professor Alex Brown and graduate student Jacob Williams, will examine peoples´ differing attitudes towards charitable giving when donating money or when working directly for charity themselves. A large portion of the grant will cover subject payments for experimental research conducted in the Economic Research Laboratory.

The Economic Research Laboratory (ERL) has received a $150,000 two-year grant from The Humanities and Social Science Enhancement of Research Capacity (HASS ERC) Internal Grants Program. The funding for the grant comes from the Division of Research and Graduate Studies and includes matching funding from the College of Liberal Arts. The grant proposal was written by Assistant Professor Alex Brown and Professor John Van Huyck. The key funding element in the grant is establishing a pool of funds for subject payments. These funds will be used in a series of pilot studies that will form the basis for larger grants that will sustain the ERL for years to come. The grant funds will support not only faculty research, but also graduate student and undergraduate student research. These research activities will serve to elevate the national stature of the program in behavioral economics.