This book provides an intimate history of Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith’s early life, combining elements of biography, history, economics and philosophy to show how crucial incidents early in his life provided the necessary framework for his research into experimental economics. Smith takes the reader from his family roots on the railroads and oil fields of Middle America to his early life on a farm in Depression-wracked Kansas. A mediocre student in high school, Smith attended Friends University, on Wichita’s west side, where an intense study of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and astronomy enabled him to pass the examinations to enter Caltech and study under luminary scientists like Linus Pauling. Eventually Smith discovered economics and pursued graduate study in the field at University of Kansas and Harvard. This volume ends with his Camelot years at Purdue, where he began his famous work in experimental economics, nurturing his research into an unlikely new field of economics.

The first and only encyclopedia to focus on the economic and financial behaviors of consumers, investors, and organizations, including an exploration of how people make good—and bad—economic decisions. Traditional economic theories speculate how and when people should spend money. But consumers don't always behave as expected and often adopt strategies that might appear unorthodox yet are, at times, more effective than the rule prescribed by conventional wisdom. This groundbreaking text examines the ways in which people make financial decisions, whether it is because they are smart but atypical in their choices ... or just irrational decision makers. A leading authority on behavioral economics, Morris Altman and more than 150 expert contributors delve into key concepts in behavioral economics, economic psychology, behavioral finance, neuroeconomics, experimental economics, and institutional economics to help inform economic models based on reality, not theory. Through 250 informative entries, the book explores various aspects of the subject including decision making, economic analysis, and public policy. In addition to introducing concepts to readers new to the subject, the book sheds light on more advanced financial topics in a manner that is objective, comprehensive, and accessible.

This sequel to A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume I, continues the intimate history of Vernon Smith’s personal and professional maturation after a dozen years at Purdue. The scene now shifts to twenty-six transformative years at the University of Arizona, then to George Mason University, and his recognition by the Nobel Prize Committee in 2002. The book ends with his most recent decade at Chapman University. At Arizona Vernon and his students studied asset trading markets and learned how wrong it had been to suppose that price bubbles could not occur where markets were full-information transparent. Their work in computerization of the lab facilitated very complex supply and demand experiments in natural gas pipeline, communication and electricity markets that paved the way for implementing, through decentralized market processes, the liberalization of industries traditionally believed to be “natural” monopolies. The “Smart Computer Assisted Market” was born. Smith’s move to George Mason University greatly facilitated government and industry work in tandem with various public and private entities, whereas his relocation to Chapman University coincided with the Great Recession, whose similarity with the Depression was evident in his research. There he integrated two fundamental kinds of markets with laboratory experiments: Consumer non-durables, the supply and demand for which was stable in the lab and in the economy, and durable assets whose bubble tendencies made them unstable in the lab as well as in the economy—witness the great housing-mortgage market bubble run-up of 1997-2007. This book’s conversational style and emphasis on the backstory of published research accomplishments allows readers an exclusive peak into how and why economists pursue their work. It’s a must-read for those interested in experimental economics, the housing crisis, and economic history.

John Chipman is one of the most esteemed economists working in international trade theory. Presented in two volumes, this work presents Chipman's survey articles on the theory of international trade. The papers explore the evolution of thought from classical to new-classical and on to modern theory.