Metanomics: Experimental Economics in Virtual Worlds

Materials related to this program are now compiled here.

This Monday, April 7th, 2008, at 11:00AM-12:00PM SLT (2:00-3:00PM EST), Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics will host a panel on the challenges and opportunities of conducting economic experiments in virtual worlds. Our guests include:

- Tom Chesney, Lecturer in Information Systems at Nottingham University Business School
- John Duffy, Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh
- Steve Atlas, economics graduate student at Tufts University

Monday's show will include:

- Introduction to the field of experimental economics
- Explanation of motivation of and results from recent experiments conducted by Chesney and myself in Second Life
- Discussion of challenges and opportunities of experimental research in virtual worlds.
- Possibilities for macroeconomic research leveraging virtual worlds.

To fully participate in Monday's event, we recommend the following background reading:

1. John Duffy's recent working paper critiques my virtual lab and questions the validity of demographic information collected online. Last month, Tom Chesney started a discussion about Duffy's article on Terra Nova, which has become Google's top hit for the phrase "Lying Online."

2. Tom Chesney's working paper, Virtual World Experimentation: An Exploratory Study replicates several well-known economic experiments in Second Life.

3. My master's thesis on this topic is nearing completion, but it is not quite ready for public scrutiny yet. It will be made available by the end of the week.

4. Another recent working paper by John Duffy surveys macroeconomic laboratory research on the microfoundations of macroeconomic models.