The Marginal Trader Hypothesis (Forsythe, Robert, Forrest Nelson, George R. Neumann and Jack Wright. (1992). Anatomy of an Experimental Political Stock Market, American Economic Review 82(5): 1142-61) posits that a small group of well-informed traders keep an asset's market price equal to its...

In this article we describe a form of critical pedagogy introduced in an environmental economics course that engaged students in critical action. Critical action takes students beyond critical thinking, teaching them to think critically in analyzing classroom material and to frame action...

The author presents an enhanced version of Bergstrom and Miller's (Bergstrom, T.C. and J.H. Miller. 1999. Experiments with Economic Principles: Microeconomics Irwin McGraw-Hill: Boston) bargaining experiment. This improved version is simpler to implement and generates a more robust classroom...

Over the past twenty years there has been a dramatic increase in both CEO pay and the wealth of the richest Americans. We hypothesize that the increase in CEO pay is due to the same economy-wide factors that have increased the asset value of the wealthiest Americans. We test this hypothesis by...

Numerous studies using a variety of methods suggest that beach re-nourishment generates benefits to both recreational users and property owners. However, the only study to use a repeat sales index (Cordes, Gatlaff and Yezer, 2001) found no effect of re-nourishment on property values. We use a...

Many financial scandals appear to depend on a lack of skepticism on the part of their victims. For example, sophisticated investors trusted Bernie Madoff, despite early warning signs of implausible returns. Our study investigates how education and personality explain skeptical behavior in...

We analyzed power law (Pareto) distributions of one-minute oil prices through the US Oil Fund (Ticker symbol USO), from January 1 through March 31, 2011. Using the daily power law exponent, α, we determined a critical value which predicted a price trend reversal. This critical value, estimated...

We observe that CEO compensation and top incomes in the US have both been increasing rapidly over the last thirty years. We hypothesize that the trends in CEO compensation have been caused by the same economy-wide factors that have contributed to increases in income. We test this hypothesis by...

We use voting experiments to examine the effects of different primary types on voter turnout, voter choice and election outcomes. We use monetary incentives to induce our participants' preferences for candidate and party, eliminating the incentive for expressive voting, allowing us to focus...

Over the past twenty years there has been a dramatic increase in both CEO pay and the wealth of the richest Americans. We examine three hypotheses regarding the relationship between wealth inequality and CEO compensation: first, that the increase in CEO income inequality helped cause increased...