Vernon L Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3604885 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vernon L Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vernon L |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH V L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chapman University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7917-1870 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 322 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1958 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Sympathy with resentment: Willingness to report criminal behavior depends on the punishment
A method for identifying parameterizations of the Compensation election and Quadratic voting that admit pure-strategy equilibria
Neoclassical Supply and Demand, Experiments, and the Classical Theory of Price Formation
Neoclassical price theory was founded on axioms of price-taking behavior and the law of one price in a market, axioms inconsistent with a theory of endogenous price discovery in markets. Classical economists including Adam Smith narrated a price discovery process based on buyer and seller reservation values and their motivation to buy low and sell high; the classical sketch of price formation offers a quite fruitful foundation for a modern theory…
Causal versus Consequential Motives in Mental Models of Agent Social and Economic Action: Experiments, and the Neoclassical Diversion in Economics
Since the neoclassical revolution of the 1870s, reasoning and analysis in economic theory has been dominated by utility theory, in which: Action implies Outcome implies Utility. I describe three prominent and unexpected failures of this utilitarian framework to predict the replicable outcomes of experiments. First, in supply and demand experiments for non‐durables the predicted equilibrium obtains, but under conditions violating those thought nec…
Experimental tests of the tolerated theft and risk-reduction theories of resource exchange
Adoption of Black children by White parents in heterosexual and homosexual relationships: Exploring mental health trainees' explicit and implicit attitudes
We investigated 163 (82.2% female; 73% White; and 91.4% heterosexual) mental health trainees' explicit and implicit attitudes toward heterosexual, lesbian, and gay White couples adopting and raising Black children. Explicit attitudes were assessed with a vignette depicting a Black child in need of a home. Implicit attitudes were assessed with the multifactor implicit association test (IAT) protocol. Explicit data showed that most participants ind…
Economics for the Curious. Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates
1. Depressions are Different Paul Krugman 2. Rethinking Economics: A Classical Perspective Vernon L. Smith 3. Employment and Unemployment Peter Diamond 4. Unemployment During and After the Great Recession Dale T. Mortensen 5. Long Term Trends and Stuctural Change in the Global Economy Michael Spence 6. On Policy Consistency Finn E. Kydland 7. Natural Resources and Sustainability Robert Solow 8. Research Studies Approaching Cooperative Games with …
Economics of Natural & Environmental Resources (Routledge Revivals)
First written in 1977, Economics of Natural and Environmental Resources presents a collection of articles written in exploration of the economic, social, and ecological problems peculiar to natural and environmental resources. Whilst focusing on the economic theory of natural resources, the contributions also consider geological, technological, and institutional features of particular resources. Policy implications and considerations are central …
Adam Smith: From Propriety and Sentiments to Property and Wealth
Why return to Adam Smith?" Because we learn that he had fresh-for-today insights, derived from a modeling perspective that was never part of economic analysis. Smith wrote two classics: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; hereafter Sentiments ); and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776; hereafter Wealth ). In Sentiments it is argued that human sociability in close-knit groups is governed by the "propriety and fit…
Exchange, Specialization, and Property as a Discovery Process
This report summarizes some of the findings of an experimental investigation motivated by the question, How might exchange, specialization, and property—rules governing actions—emerge jointly in human economic betterment? Sparse experimental instructions in a virtual village environment serve to inform individual subjects how to produce items and the payoffs earned by items moved into their homes. Unknown to the subjects, but discoverable through…
Exchange and Specialisation as a Discovery Process
In this article we study the performance of an economy that can support specialisation if the participants develop and follow some system of exchange. We define a closed economy in which the participants must discover the ability to exchange, implement it, and ascertain what they are comparatively advantaged in producing. Many of our participants demonstrate the ability to find comparative advantage, capture gains from trade and effectively choos…
Monetary Policy, Credit Extension, and Housing Bubbles: 2008 And 1929
Asset‐market bubbles occur dependably in laboratory experiments and almost as reliably throughout economic history—yet they do not usually bring the global economy to its knees. The Crash of 2008 was caused by the bursting of a housing bubble of unusual size that was fed by a massive expansion of mortgage credit—facilitated, in turn, by the longest sustained expansionary monetary policy of the past half century. Much of this mortgage credit was e…
Exclusionary Bundling and the Effects of a Competitive Fringe
The traditional analysis of exclusionary bundling examines the impact of a monopolist bundling product A with another product B, which is competitively provided. Using experimental posted-offer markets, we investigate the exclusionary and welfare implications of having a fringe competitor in the A market. We find that the fringe seller increases the consumer surplus while decreasing the seller surplus and that the fringe seller does not affect th…
Economics in the Laboratory
Vernon Smith (1927–) received his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard. Although his more than two hundred books and articles address issues in many areas of economics, he is best known for his work on experimental economics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 2002. After many years at the University of Arizona, Smith is now a professor of economics at George Mason University. Why do economists conduct experiments? To answer that question, it is f…
Sustaining Cooperation in Trust Games
It is well known in evolutionary game theory that population clustering in Prisoner's Dilemma games allows some cooperative strategies to invade populations of stable defecting strategies. We adapt this idea of population clustering to a two-person trust game. Without knowing it, players are typed based on their recent track record as to whether or not they are trusting (Players 1) and whether or not they are trustworthy (Players 2). They are the…
Human nature: An economic perspective
An economist writing on the topic of human nature is surely expected to talk about decision making by narrowly self-interested rational agents
Constructivist and Ecological Rationality in Economics
When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, (reason's) conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attained with difficulty (Hume, 1739/, p 507). we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within different kinds of orders according to different rule…
Positive reciprocity and intentions in trust games
Using the Machiavellianism instrument to predict trustworthiness in a bargaining game
Allowing Small Businesses and the Self-Employed to Buy Health Care Coverage through Public Programs
The large number of uninsured working Americans and the extent of public support enjoyed by employment-based health insurance argues for a coverage initiative that fosters access to affordable benefits through employment. This proposal, which reflects models in both Massachusetts and Michigan, entails the development of publicly organized and subsidized group health insurance for small firms with low-wage workers. States would provide overall adm…
The Two Faces of Adam Smith
Fairness: Effect on Temporary and Equilibrium Prices in Posted-Offer Markets
Journal Article Fairness: Effect on Temporary and Equilibrium Prices in Posted-Offer Markets Get access Robert Franciosi, Robert Franciosi University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Praveen Kujal, Praveen Kujal University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Roland Michelitsch, Roland Michelitsch University of Arizona Search for other works by this …
Preferences, Property Rights, and Anonymity in Bargaining Games
Economics in the Laboratory
The questions addressed in this paper include: What is a laboratory experiment? What are the reasons why economists conduct such experiments? What have we learned? Among the many findings of experiments are included: institutions (the rules of exchange) matter; optimization in markets is not achieved by conscious calculation; less information is sometimes better; common information is not sufficient to yield common 'knowledge' or expectations; un…
On the failure to induce meager offers in ultimatum game
Rational Choice: The Contrast between Economics and Psychology
Rational Choice--the published record of a conference on economics and psychology--frames the issues as a contest between economic theory and the falsifying evidence from psychology. According to a third perspective, that of experimental economics, most standard theory provides a correct first approximation in predicting motivated behavior in laboratory experimental markets, but the theory is incomplete, particularly in articulating convergence p…
An Experimental Study of Competitive Market Behavior
The Primitive Hunter Culture, Pleistocene Extinction, and the Rise of Agriculture
The hypothesis that megafauna extinction some 10,000 years ago was due to "overkill" by Paleolithic hunters is examined using an economic model of a replenishable resource. The large herding animals that became extinct, such as mammoth, bison, camel, and mastodon, presented low hunting cost and high kill value. The absence of appropriation provided incentives for the wastage killing evident in some kill sites, while the slow growth, long lives, a…
Using the Machiavellianism instrument to predict trustworthiness in a bargaining game
Economics in the Laboratory
The questions addressed in this paper include: What is a laboratory experiment? What are the reasons why economists conduct such experiments? What have we learned? Among the many findings of experiments are included: institutions (the rules of exchange) matter; optimization in markets is not achieved by conscious calculation; less information is sometimes better; common information is not sufficient to yield common 'knowledge' or expectations; un…
Optimal Insurance Coverage
Theory, Experiment and Economics
It is now over thirty years since research was initiated in the laboratory experimental study of market behavior and performance. This essay provides my interpretation of what the implications of this type of work are for the study of economics
On Models of Commercial Fishing
Investment and Production
Journal Article Investment and Production Get access Investment and Production. By V. L. Smith. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. Cxviii. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (London: Oxford University Press), 1961. Pp. xi + 340. 60J.) J. A. Mirrlees J. A. Mirrlees Trinity College, Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 74, Issue 294, 1 June 1964, Pages 454–456, https://…
Monetary Policy, Credit Extension, and Housing Bubbles: 2008 And 1929
Asset‐market bubbles occur dependably in laboratory experiments and almost as reliably throughout economic history—yet they do not usually bring the global economy to its knees. The Crash of 2008 was caused by the bursting of a housing bubble of unusual size that was fed by a massive expansion of mortgage credit—facilitated, in turn, by the longest sustained expansionary monetary policy of the past half century. Much of this mortgage credit was e…
The Principle of Unanimity and Voluntary Consent in Social Choice
A discrete version of the author's incentive-compatible Auction Mechanism for public goods is applied to the problem of social choice (voting) among distinct mutually exclusive alternatives. This Auction Election is a bidding mechanism characterized by (1) unanimity, (2) provision for the voluntary compensation of voters harmed by a winning proposition, and (3) incentives for "reasonable" bidding by excluding members of a collective from maximal …
Game Theory and Experimental Economics: Beginnings and Early Influences
Research Article| December 01 1992 Game Theory and Experimental Economics: Beginnings and Early Influences Vernon L. Smith Vernon L. Smith Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1992) 24 (Supplement): 241–282. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-24-Supplement-241 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Vernon L. Smith; Game Theory and Experimental Economics: Beginning…
Experimental Auction Markets and the Walrasian Hypothesis
Experimental tests of the tolerated theft and risk-reduction theories of resource exchange
Fairness: Effect on Temporary and Equilibrium Prices in Posted-Offer Markets
Journal Article Fairness: Effect on Temporary and Equilibrium Prices in Posted-Offer Markets Get access Robert Franciosi, Robert Franciosi University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Praveen Kujal, Praveen Kujal University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Roland Michelitsch, Roland Michelitsch University of Arizona Search for other works by this …
Adam Smith: From Propriety and Sentiments to Property and Wealth
Why return to Adam Smith?" Because we learn that he had fresh-for-today insights, derived from a modeling perspective that was never part of economic analysis. Smith wrote two classics: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; hereafter Sentiments ); and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776; hereafter Wealth ). In Sentiments it is argued that human sociability in close-knit groups is governed by the "propriety and fit…
Exchange and Specialisation as a Discovery Process
In this article we study the performance of an economy that can support specialisation if the participants develop and follow some system of exchange. We define a closed economy in which the participants must discover the ability to exchange, implement it, and ascertain what they are comparatively advantaged in producing. Many of our participants demonstrate the ability to find comparative advantage, capture gains from trade and effectively choos…
Human nature: An economic perspective
An economist writing on the topic of human nature is surely expected to talk about decision making by narrowly self-interested rational agents
Sympathy with resentment: Willingness to report criminal behavior depends on the punishment
Neoclassical Supply and Demand, Experiments, and the Classical Theory of Price Formation
Neoclassical price theory was founded on axioms of price-taking behavior and the law of one price in a market, axioms inconsistent with a theory of endogenous price discovery in markets. Classical economists including Adam Smith narrated a price discovery process based on buyer and seller reservation values and their motivation to buy low and sell high; the classical sketch of price formation offers a quite fruitful foundation for a modern theory…
On the failure to induce meager offers in ultimatum game
In Search of Predatory Pricing
Experiments in Economics
Journal Article Experiments in Economics Get access Experiments in Economics. By John D. Hey. (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Pp. xi + 242. £30.00 hardback. ISBN 0 631 17989 5.) Vernon L. Smith Vernon L. Smith University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 102, Issue 415, 1 November 1992, Pages 1568–1570, https://doi.org/10.2307/2234830 Published: 01…
Nature, the experimental laboratory, and the credibility of hypotheses
Experiments at Ann Arbor indicate that rat life expectancy increases with a diet of ecstasy. Raffish rats live as long as eight years, the tests show, while puritan rats, on love-free and otherwise grim and grubby diets, succumb at five. The autobiographical parallel is tempting, but though “love” is said to be a good metabolizer, and though bacchanals have been recommended for the circulation, whether my two-and-fourscore years have been sustain…
Sustaining Cooperation in Trust Games
It is well known in evolutionary game theory that population clustering in Prisoner's Dilemma games allows some cooperative strategies to invade populations of stable defecting strategies. We adapt this idea of population clustering to a two-person trust game. Without knowing it, players are typed based on their recent track record as to whether or not they are trusting (Players 1) and whether or not they are trustworthy (Players 2). They are the…
An Economic Analysis of Contributions Under the Income-Tax Laws
An Experimental Study of Competitive Market Behavior
Investment and Production
Journal Article Investment and Production Get access Investment and Production. By V. L. Smith. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. Cxviii. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (London: Oxford University Press), 1961. Pp. xi + 340. 60J.) J. A. Mirrlees J. A. Mirrlees Trinity College, Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 74, Issue 294, 1 June 1964, Pages 454–456, https://…
Nature, the experimental laboratory, and the credibility of hypotheses
Experiments at Ann Arbor indicate that rat life expectancy increases with a diet of ecstasy. Raffish rats live as long as eight years, the tests show, while puritan rats, on love-free and otherwise grim and grubby diets, succumb at five. The autobiographical parallel is tempting, but though “love” is said to be a good metabolizer, and though bacchanals have been recommended for the circulation, whether my two-and-fourscore years have been sustain…
Experimental Auction Markets and the Walrasian Hypothesis
Bidding Theory and the Treasury Bill Auction: Does Price Discrimination Increase Bill Prices
This paper is not directed to the question of whether the Treasury should or should not practice in the public sector what the Clayton Act prohibits in the private sector. The paper is concerned exclusively with the theoretical question of whether the Treasury would necessarily receive higher prices by employing price discrimination than it could get by selling the issues at a single price. From a theory of bidding under uncertainty, which seems …
Optimal Insurance Coverage
Taxes and Share Valuation in Competitive Markets
This paper extends the fundamental theorem of share (or capital) valuation under conditions of certainty and purely competitive markets, to allow for the distinction between capital gains and income in the taxation of personal income. The objective is to develop the theorem for the tax case in a form general enough to allow for corporations both currently and not currently paying a dividend. However, the general derivation is sufficiently tedious…
On Models of Commercial Fishing
On Models of Commercial Fishing: The Traditional Literature Needs No Defenders
The Primitive Hunter Culture, Pleistocene Extinction, and the Rise of Agriculture
The hypothesis that megafauna extinction some 10,000 years ago was due to "overkill" by Paleolithic hunters is examined using an economic model of a replenishable resource. The large herding animals that became extinct, such as mammoth, bison, camel, and mastodon, presented low hunting cost and high kill value. The absence of appropriation provided incentives for the wastage killing evident in some kill sites, while the slow growth, long lives, a…
The Principle of Unanimity and Voluntary Consent in Social Choice
A discrete version of the author's incentive-compatible Auction Mechanism for public goods is applied to the problem of social choice (voting) among distinct mutually exclusive alternatives. This Auction Election is a bidding mechanism characterized by (1) unanimity, (2) provision for the voluntary compensation of voters harmed by a winning proposition, and (3) incentives for "reasonable" bidding by excluding members of a collective from maximal …
In Search of Predatory Pricing
Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets
Spot asset trading is studied where the only external source of value is an independent draw from a common information dividend distribution at the end of each of fifteen trading periods. Fourteen of twenty-two experiments exhibit price bubbles. This tendency to bubble decreases with trader experience. The regression of changes in mean price on lagged excess bids (bids minus offers in the previous period) supports the hypothesis that the intercep…
Theory, Experiment and Economics
It is now over thirty years since research was initiated in the laboratory experimental study of market behavior and performance. This essay provides my interpretation of what the implications of this type of work are for the study of economics
One Man's Locomotives: 50 Years Experience with Railway Motive Power
Rational Choice: The Contrast between Economics and Psychology
Rational Choice--the published record of a conference on economics and psychology--frames the issues as a contest between economic theory and the falsifying evidence from psychology. According to a third perspective, that of experimental economics, most standard theory provides a correct first approximation in predicting motivated behavior in laboratory experimental markets, but the theory is incomplete, particularly in articulating convergence p…
Schools of Thought in Economics 7: Experimental Economics
Journal Article Schools of Thought in Economics 7: Experimental Economics. Schools of Thought in Economics 8: Radical Political Economy: Volumes I and II. Schools of Thought in Economics g: Marxian Economics: Volumes I, II and III. Schools of Thought in Economics 11: Monetarism: Volumes I and II. Get access Schools of Thought in Economics y: Experimental Economics. Edited by VERNON L. SMITH (Aldershot, UK, andBrookfield, USA: Edward Elgar, 1990. …
Experiments in Economics
Journal Article Experiments in Economics Get access Experiments in Economics. By John D. Hey. (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Pp. xi + 242. £30.00 hardback. ISBN 0 631 17989 5.) Vernon L. Smith Vernon L. Smith University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 102, Issue 415, 1 November 1992, Pages 1568–1570, https://doi.org/10.2307/2234830 Published: 01…
Designing Call Auction Institutions: Is Double Dutch The Best
Journal Article Designing Call Auction Institutions: Is Double Dutch The Best? Get access Kevin A. McCabe, Kevin A. McCabe University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Stephen J. Rassenti, Stephen J. Rassenti University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Vernon L. Smith Vernon L. Smith University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: …
Game Theory and Experimental Economics: Beginnings and Early Influences
Research Article| December 01 1992 Game Theory and Experimental Economics: Beginnings and Early Influences Vernon L. Smith Vernon L. Smith Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1992) 24 (Supplement): 241–282. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-24-Supplement-241 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Vernon L. Smith; Game Theory and Experimental Economics: Beginning…
On the failure to induce meager offers in ultimatum game
Preferences, Property Rights, and Anonymity in Bargaining Games
Economics in the Laboratory
The questions addressed in this paper include: What is a laboratory experiment? What are the reasons why economists conduct such experiments? What have we learned? Among the many findings of experiments are included: institutions (the rules of exchange) matter; optimization in markets is not achieved by conscious calculation; less information is sometimes better; common information is not sufficient to yield common 'knowledge' or expectations; un…
Fairness: Effect on Temporary and Equilibrium Prices in Posted-Offer Markets
Journal Article Fairness: Effect on Temporary and Equilibrium Prices in Posted-Offer Markets Get access Robert Franciosi, Robert Franciosi University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Praveen Kujal, Praveen Kujal University of Arizona Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Roland Michelitsch, Roland Michelitsch University of Arizona Search for other works by this …
Economics (32 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (21 works) · Microeconomics (19 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Business (10 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (10 works) · Economic theories and models (9 works)