2010 Condliffe Memorial Lecture

2010 Condliffe Memorial Lecture

by Professor Charles Plott

Tuesday, 13 April, 5:30 - 6:30pm

Coppertop, Commerce Building, University of Canterbury.

Given my previous posting on Robert Sugden talking about Experimental Economics I feel I should point out the upcoming Condliffe Memorial Lecture by Professor Charles Plott which is also talking about Experimental Economics. The lecture outlines the development and use of laboratory methods, including the key discoveries and applications. The early science focused on the basic laws of supply and demand and how they operate to create a process of price discovery.The science evolved to include how information is transmitted through prices and the possibility of bubbles and market instability. More recent evolution finds the research focused on the design of competitive institutions to solve complex resource and environmental problems. The lecture focuses on the nature of the discoveries and how they are known through the application of laboratory experimental methods.

Dr. Plott is founder and Director of Caltech’s Laboratory for Economics and Political Science. Dr. Plott’s research is focused on the basic principles of process performance and the use of those principles in the design of decentralized, electronic processes to solve complex problems. The contributions include over 180 scientific papers, the development of widely applied laboratory tools, and participation in the design and implementation of computerized market mechanisms for allocating complex items (such as the markets for pollution permits in Southern California, the FCC auction of licenses for Personal Communication Systems, the auctions for electric power in California, the allocation of landing rights at the major U.S. airports, access of private trains to public railway tracks, access to natural gas pipelines, and the application of complex procurements). He is the discoverer of the ability of markets to collect and aggregate information and his recent research is focused on information aggregation mechanisms (sometimes called “prediction markets”).

Dr. Plott is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Science and the Fellows of the Econometric Society. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Senior Scholar, and a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He was recently elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economics Association. He holds a Ph.D degree in Economics from the University of Virginia and an MS and BS at Oklahoma State University. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from L'université Pierre Mendès France and from Purdue University.

RSVP: Please RSVP, by Friday 9th April, for this event by contacting: Glenda.Lorimer@canterbury.ac.nz.