Recently Funded Research

Swarthout, 2007-2008
Collaborative Research: Competitive Market Experiments for the Microeconomics Curriculum, NSF DUE-0633008, $79,177

Swarthout and Laury, 2006-2007
Improving Student Learning through the use of Class-based Economics Experiments, GSU RPG Provost grant, $49,000

Cox, 2006-2009
Collaborative Research: IT-Enhanced Market Design and Experiments,  NSF IIS-0527563, $249,979

Cox and Swarthout, 2005-2008
Disseminating Experiments in Economics with the EconPort Digital Library, $899,998, NSF DUE-0442660

Laury, 2002-2006
Choosing Among Risky Alternatives: An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Insurance Markets on Biases in Decision-Making, NSF, $89,157

Laury, 2001-2007
Game Theory and Social Interactions: A Virtual Collaboratory for Teaching and Research, NSF, $200,348

Petrie, 2005-2006
Ethnic and Social Barriers to Cooperation: Experiments Studying the Extent and Nature of Discrimination in Urban Peru, Inter-American Development Bank, $40,000

Petrie, 2005-2006
Prejudice and the Perpetuation of Differences: Experiments Exploring the Impact of Performance and Appearance on Sorting, GSU Research Initiation, $10,000

Petrie and Laury, 2005-2006
Trusting Appearances and Reciprocating Looks: Experiments on Gender and Race Preferences, GSU Advancement of Women Faculty, $6,000

Faculty Research Interests

James C. Cox

Jim Cox's research interests center on experimental economics and applied microeconomic theory. He has conducted research on integration of portfolio choice and consumer demand theories, public expenditure theory, credit rationing, energy policy, economics and political economics of minimum wage legislation, auction markets, job search models, decentralized mechanisms for control of monopoly, the utility hypothesis, the preference reversal phenomenon, procurement contracting, the lottery payoff experimental procedure, topics in social epistemology and legal theory, and group vs. individual behavior in strategic market games and fairness games. Professor Cox's current research includes work on theoretical modeling and laboratory experiments with: trust, reciprocity, and altruism; small- and large-stakes risk aversion; e-commerce with combinatorial demands; voluntary contributions to public goods; common property investments; and centipede games vs. Dutch auctions.

Paul Ferraro

Ferraro focuses his research activities mainly on environmental economics and policy (with an emphasis on biodiversity protection), but also conducts research in behavioral economics. In the latter area, his current work includes: (1) the economics of cultural diversity and discrimination, (2) the relationship between competence and self-awareness and its implications for economic behavior, and (3) creating novel experimental designs that better discriminate among competing hypotheses about observed behavior in popular experimental games.

Susan Laury

Susan Laury uses experimental methods to address a wide range of economic issues. Her current research includes investigating individual attitudes toward risks involving gains and losses, how the presence of insurance markets, and the types of policies offered, affect decisions in risky environments, and in exploring who other-regarding behavior affects decision-making. She also uses experiments in the classroom and has co-authored papers that describe classroom games. Her research has been published in journals such as American Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, and Public Choice.

Ragan Petrie

Ragan Petrie's research is on the social context of decision making. Specifically, she is interested in how physical characteristics, such as beauty, gender and race, interact with information on behavior to affect decisions. Recent work examines how expectations differ across groups, discrimination in decision making, and the value of information. Her research has touched on topics such as bargaining and charitable fundraising, and she has worked in South Africa, Rwanda and Peru. She uses experiments and survey data to examine these topics. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Vjollca Sadiraj

Sadiraj is involved in research programs in public choice, public economics, individual social preferences and decision theory. She is interested in both theoretical modeling and experimental testing of the theory. Her current projects include (a) emergence and role of interests groups in spatial models of electoral competition, (b) effects of rotation schemes on committee performance, (c) effects of benefit taxation and ability to pay on excess burden, (d) theoretical modeling of social preferences, conditional and unconditional altruism, (e) individual risk aversion in small and large stakes.

Todd Swarthout

Todd Swarthout's research interests involve experimental economics, game theory, and auctions. Recent projects have focused on: (1) alternative forms of procurement auctions; (2) public goods mechanisms; and (3) using human interaction with computerized algorithms to better understand strategic behavior in games. He is also involved in developing software technology for instructional games and activities in economic education.

Laura Taylor

Taylor's fields of specialization include natural resource and environmental economics, with an emphasis on environmental valuation. Taylor uses experimental methods in her research examining the consistency of stated-preference environmental valuation methods and to explore how well subject's behavior in the lab predicts their decisions in more context-rich, uncontrolled situations. Her publications have appeared in such journals as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.