Year: 1995
Type: preprint
Abstract: PresentationThe 1,aboratory of Experimental Economics was created in 1991 within the Department of Economics of the University of Trento.Its initial purpose was t o conduct experiments in analysis of organisational behaviour -which is still its principal area of interest although others have recently been added, most notably study of the formation of choice behaviour in demand for consumer goods and decision making in the fiscal and distributive area.The orgiginal idea was to develop models of 'organisational learning' which describe the growth of organisational and informational structures in firms and institutions, and t o conduct analysis and empirical verification utilizing recent techniques developed in the field of Experimental Economics.This purely experimental work is now flanked by analysis in the theoretical area of the organisation and the firm.Particular emphasis has been placed on the development of models of information structures in firms and on the representation and sirnulation of the rnultiactor decision processes that unfold within them, at the managerial and planning level and also from the point of view of consensus formation.The work of the Laboratory has fully borne out the decision to conduct research from three different disciplinary points of view: (a) that of the cognitive sciences, in order to deepen understanding of learning processes by means of laboratory experiments and in order to model the knowledge transfer mechanisms that characterize organisational learning; (b) that of the theory of decision support for the understanding and formulation of the preferences leading to the decision; (c) that of organisational analysis in order t o study the emergence of different forms of cooperation and the solution of cognitive and decisional conflicts; (d) that of institutional economics, t o move into the direction of explaining t he rise of ecorlomic institutions on the basis of new micro-foundations.One indirect aim of the project is to develop a research agenda in a coordinate way with various groups sharing the same methodological approach.Among these groups several Italian universities are involved (CB Bembo at Venice, Political Science at Turin, the University of Genoa, the Bocconi University of Milan, the Universities of Modena and Trento).The Labortory is also cooperating in systematic manner with a number of international research centres, in particular with the following groups: BACH (University of Michigan), CSOM (University of Amsterdam), Dynamics of Computation Group (Palo Alto), SCANCOR (Stanford University), CCE (University of California, Los Angeles).The Laboratory gratefully acknowledges the support received from the University of Trento ("Progetto Speciale") and the Italian Ministry of University and Research ("MURST" 40%).More information on Laboratory's research is available on INTERNET at the location: http://black.cs.unitn.it.
Author: Massimo Egidi
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1599307559