Our textbook is called Experiments
with Economic Principles. It was written by Professor Theodore
Bergstrom of UCSB and Professor John Miller of Carnegie Mellon University.
It is the first introductory economics textbook to be focussed on
principles of economics by means of experiments. I believe that this method
of teaching is superior to the standard lecture methods. I hope that
you will agree.
PREFACE
Taking this course in economics-by-experiment is a bit like being dinner guest at a cannibal's house. You may be a diner, you may be the dinner, or you may be both.
If you take a laboratory course in the physical sciences, you get to mix smelly chemicals, or monkey with pulleys, or dissect a frog, but you are always the experimenter and never the subject of the experiment. In the market experiments conducted in this class, you and your classmates will be the participants in the markets as well as the scientific observers who try to understand the results.
It is hard to imagine that a chemist
can put herself in the place of a hydrogen molecule. A biologist
who studies animal behavior is not likely to know what it feels like to
be a duck. You are more fortunate. You are studying the behavior and interactions
of people in economically interesting situations. And as one of these interacting
economic agents, you will be able to experience the problems faced by such
an agent first hand. We suspect that you will learn nearly as much about
economic principles from your experience as a participant as you will from
your analysis as an observer.