Experiments for Education

Experiments conducted by undergraduate students

Experimental Economics helps undergraduate students (hereafter, students) to study economics effectively. Recently, a lot of researchers have been refining existing experiments and developing new experiments and experimental tools. For example, Fischbacher and Cox, whom we invited to KSU in 2003, are engaging in developing z-tree and Econ-Port, respectively. Z-tree is the tool for experiments for market mechanism and game theory. Econ-Port is an archive of experimental materials. Certainly students play a game eagerly and, after the game, remark "we enjoyed the game and studied economics a lot through the game". However, we know following facts from our teaching experience: students only learn how to win other students under a game but they do not learn a theory, for example, the concept of Nash equilibrium. That is, they do not understand the relationship between an economic phenomenon and an economic theory.

Our project does not regard students as experimental materials but as scientists who conduct experiments. To make subjects learn an economic theory from scientific view, they do not only participate in a game but also conduct a game: under every experiment, some students conduct an experiment and others take part in the experiment. Through participating in and conducting experiments, students think deeply and understand an economic theory. Additionally, this method enables them to increase their presentation and report writing skills.

Lemon market experiment: an example of an experiment by students

The purpose of this experiment is to check how players trade a commodity under the asymmetric information: Sellers know the qualities of their products but buyers do not know them. At first four students conducted the experiment, but the result did not meet their expectations.

The reason why they did not attain the expected result was as follows: they thought that in ten-round decision makings, even subjects without any information learned the fraction of high-quality, and did not inform subjects of the trading result. However, buyers did not estimate the fraction of high-quality cars since dealers did not offer reasonable prices to buyers and a lot of offers were not accepted. The experimenters understood that this behavior came from the lack of the appropriate information, extended the session and informed subjects of a lot of information. Finally they got the desirable result. Since the experimenters understood the experiment and the background theory through the preparation, they were able to act according to circumstances. They analyzed the experimental result deeply, especially they explained the difference in results between the first and second session very well. These attitudes can not be brought out in a regular lecture or under the experiments conducted by teachers. By This method, we can significantly increase the understanding of economics.

Experiments to Investigate Economics Education

The results of the studies differ from study to study. So far we can not grasp the effect of economics education.
Our project has been conducting to students from various faculties and various years the experiments under which the social welfare maximization differs from the individual profit maximization.

By the end of fiscal year 2003, 222 students participated in the experiments. So far, our subjects' decision makings differ from those under the other experiments. For example, the effect of subjects' ages, which do not have the relation to subjects' majors, is different from those under the existing oversea experiments. Our study is a five-year program and we don't want potential subjects to show the purpose and the result of our study. Therefore, we don't show our results in detail.

So far, we cannot conclude our results because of the lack of the number of samples. However, we are going to conduct the experiments to investigate economic education till the end of our project. Finally, our result will be the basic data to study the effect of university (college) education upon Japanese young people.
At the same time, our project makes undergraduate students answer questionnaires. They answer questions about the fairness, the trade-off between the individual profit and the social welfare, and so on. The result of the questionnaires is different from the result under foreign countries, too. We are going to send out questionnaires to undergraduate students. We hope that the result of questionnaires reveals the economic decision makings of undergraduate students in Japan. Additionally, by checking the consistency between the behavior under the experiments and the answers in the same questions as in the experiments, we hope to reveal the features of the experimental studies.

Extension Lectures for junior high school students

Our project has conducted experiments and related lectures. So far 273 junior high school students participated in Japan and Australia.

In our extension lectures, we invite junior high school students to KSU or we visit a junior high school. Then we conduct an experiment. In education experiment, we do not reward junior high school students. In formal experiments, we reward them with stationery or confectionery. After the experiment, we teach to them economics and the economic phenomena related to the experiment.

This extension lectures have relation to experimental economics, the development of the method for economics education, the evaluation of the effect of the economics education. As the experimental study, we have the results that, in public good games, junior high school students who belong to the same school and the same club act more cooperatively than those who belong to various schools and have not met one another before and the undergraduate students. It is difficult to indicate the educational effect to junior high school students objectively. However, some of them are surprised at the fact that experiments are possible in social studies, which they regard as memory subjects. Therefore, we believe that we provide them with important resources when they consider their own futures and their study.