CTESS Events
Below is a list of past conferences and workshops organized by CTESS researchers:
Summer Institute in Theory-Based Experiments
June 20-24, 2023
Organized by Charlie Sprenger and Marina Agranov
CTESS hosted the second iteration of the Summer Institute in Theory-Based Experiments in June 2023. The program was led by Caltech faculty Charlie Sprenger and Marina Agranov and combined experimental methodology with a focus on creating experimental designs driven by theoretical models. The course material included the topics of standard and non-standard risk and time preferences, reference-dependent preferences, bargaining, pivotality and contingent reasoning. This year's program also featured presentations on new data collection tools (eye tracking, decision times, neurological evidence), with examples of the tools being used in economics experiments and their integration into theoretical models of decision-making and behavioral welfare analysis. Presenters included Antonio Rangel (Caltech), Colin Camerer (Caltech), Doug Bernheim (Stanford), and Tom Palfrey (Caltech).
The summer institute was followed by a two-day behavioral workshop, attendees of which included many of the student participants from last year's program as well as more advanced current students and Ryan Oprea (UCSB). The aim of this workshop is to give the students an opportunity to build their networks, get feedback on their own projects, and inspire each other.
Read more about the 2023 summer institute here.
Summer School in Theory-Based Experiments
June 6-10, 2022
Organized by Marina Agranov and Charlie Sprenger
CTESS hosted a summer school for advanced graduate students interested in behavioral and experimental economics. Course material combined modern experimental methodology, a theoretical focus of creating experimental data driven by core model predictions, and structural estimation from obtained data. These three elements constitute the basis of theory-driven experimental design and structural analysis.
25+ Years of Quantal Response Equilibrium Conference
March 4-5, 2022
Organized by Marina Agranov, Marco Battaglini (Cornell University), Alessandra Casella (Columbia University), Cesar Martinelli (George Mason University)
The conference centered on the notion of the Quantal Response Equilibrium, which was formalized in the seminal paper "Quantal Response Equilibria in the Normal Form Games" by Richard McKelvey and Thomas Palfrey (Games and Economic Behavior, 1995). The QRE concept provides a parsimonious union of the game theoretic Nash equilibrium approach combined with a probabilistic choice model developed in psychology. Not long after the publication of this influential paper, the QRE quickly became one of the leading approaches used to fit experimental data and provide a natural framework for estimating the effects of a variety of behavioral factors.
The keynote speaker was Charles Holt (University of Virginia).
Confirmed participants included: Thomas Palfrey (Caltech), Jens Grosser (Florida State University), James Bland (University of Toledo), Evan Friedman (University of Essex), Paul Healy (Ohio State University), Matt Kovach (Virginia Tech), Ted Turocy (University of East Anglia), Rodrigo Velez (Texas A&M University), Alex Brown (Texas A&M University), Ed Hopkins (University of Edinburgh), Cary Frydman (USC), Gerelt Tserenjigmid (UC Santa Cruz), Yusufcan Masatlioglu (University of Maryland), Casey Crisman-Cox (Texas A&M University), and Oliver Compte (Paris School of Economics).
Workshop on Information and Social Economics (WISE18)
July 26-28, 2018
Organized by Omer Tamuz, Ben Golub (Harvard), Manuel Mueller-Frank (IESE)
The workshop featured the latest research on social and economic networks and their connection with information economics. Topics included learning in networks, social influence, strategic interaction in networks, and peer effects.
Invited speakers included: Mohammad Akbarpour (Stanford), Itai Arieli (Technion), Yakov Babichenko (Technion), Aislinn Bohren (Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pennsylvania), Laura Doval (Caltech), Ignacio Esponda (UCSB), Mira Frick (Yale), Drew Fudenberg (MIT), Ben Golub (Harvard), David Hirshleifer (UC Irvine), Matthew Jackson (Stanford), Ilan Lobel (NYU), Teddy Mekonnen (Caltech), Manuel Mueller-Frank (IESE), Mallesh Pai (Rice), Luciano Pomatto (Caltech), Evan Sadler (Columbia), Lones Smith (Wisconsin), Rann Smorodinsky (Technion), Eduard Talamàs (UPenn), Omer Tamuz (Caltech), Leeat Yariv (Princeton), Junjie Zhou (NUS)
Third Annual Southwest Experimental and Behavioral Economics Workshop (SWEBE)
May 18-19, 2018
Organized by Marina Agranov
The workshop gave researchers in the southwest the opportunity to share their latest work in behavioral and experimental economics.
Invited speakers included: Veena Jeevanandam Blume (UC San Diego), Juan Carrillo (USC), John Duffy (UC Irvine), Federico Echenique (Caltech), Ivalina Kalcheva (UC Riverside), Darhyun Kim (USC), Jeongbin Kim (Caltech), Erik Kimbrough (Chapman), Radhika Lunawat (UC Irvine), Seung-Keun Martinez (UC San Diego), Lydia Mechtenberg (Hamburg University), Ryan Oprea (UC Santa Barbara), Garret Ridinger (UN Reno), Hisam Sabouni (Claremont), Ketki Sheth (UC Merced), Josh Tasoff (Claremont Graduate University)
The Southern California Symposium on Network Economics and Game Theory (NEGT)
January 12, 2018
Organized by Omer Tamuz
This symposium brought together students, professors, and researchers from Southern California who use game theory to analyze, design, and assess networked interactions across economics, computer science, engineering, management and other disciplines.
Invited speakers included: Haifeng Xu (USC), Jiasi Chen (UCR), Vijay Vazirani (UCI), Hamid Nazerzadeh (USC), Philipp Strack (UC Berkeley), Elchanan Mossel (MIT), Vahab Mirrokni (Google)
The Social and Information Sciences Laboratory Summer Conference
August 17-18, 2017
Organized by Laura Doval
This conference was organized around the topics of misspecification, robustness, causality, and the design of experiments.
Invited speakers included: In-Koo Cho (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Ignacio Esponda (University of California, Santa Barbara), Kristof Madarasz (London School of Economics and University of Utah), Antonio Penta (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Pablo Schenone (Arizona State University), Philipp Strack (UC Berkeley), Sylvain Chassang (New York University), Marco Ottaviani (Bocconi University), Geoffroy de Clippel (Brown University)
LA Theory Workshop
March 10, 2017
Organized by Federico Echenique and Leeat Yariv
Invited speakers included: Urmee Khan (UCR), Luciano Pomatto (Caltech), Joao Ramos (USC), Moritz Meyer-Ter-Vehn (UCLA)
Decision Theory Conference
October 21-22, 2016
Organized by Kota Saito and Federico Echenique
Invited speakers included: Marciano Siniscalchi (Northwestern University), Pietro Ortoleva (Columbia University), Jay Lu (UCLA), Chris Chambers (UC San Diego), Asen Kochov (University of Rochester), David Ahn (UC Berkeley), Charlie Sprenger (UC San Diego), Mira Frick (Yale University), Ryota Iijima (Yale University), Tomasz Strzaleki (Harvard University), John Quah (Johns Hopkins University), Efe Ok (New York University)
Workshop on Information and Social Economics (WISE16)
August 4-6, 2016
Organized by Omer Tamuz, Ben Golub (Harvard), Manuel Mueller-Frank (IESE)
The workshop featured the latest research on social and economic networks and their connection with information economics. Topics included learning in networks, social influence, strategic interaction in networks, and peer effects.
Invited speakers included: Nageeb Ali (Penn State), Itai Arieli (Technion), Kostas Bimpikis (Stanford), Yang Cai (McGill), Arun Chandrasekhar (Stanford), Laura Doval (Northwestern), Federico Echenique (Caltech), Matthew Elliott (Caltech and Cambridge), Maryam Farboodi (Princeton), David Hirshleifer (UC Irvine), Matthew Jackson (Stanford), Markus Mobius (MSR), Pooya Molavi (MIT), Manuel Mueller-Frank (IESE), Stephen Morris (Princeton), Mallesh Pai (Rice University), Luciano Pomatto (Caltech), Evan Sadler (Harvard), Vasilis Syrgkanis (Microsoft Research), Lones Smith (Wisconsin), Philipp Strack (UC Berkeley), Adam Szeidl (Central European University), Ali Tahbaz-Salehi (Columbia), Leeat Yariv (Caltech)