• Brisbane Financial Markets Workshop and Seminar

A crash course on constructing and using experiments for research and teaching.

Workshop Materials

• Workshop Intro Slides
• Instructions for Sample Experiment
• Diversification Tool
• Sample Class Lecture

Seminar Materials

• Seminar Paper: 'Lucas' in the Laboratory
• Seminar Presentation: Slides

• Financial Markets Laboratory (Upper-Level UG and Master’s Level)

Financial economics is rather abstract and mathematical, and its value is difficult to ascertain from merely observing real-world financial markets, which operate in a complex environment where many key variables either remain unobserved or cannot be measured reliably. In this class, students learn about the theory of finance through participation in a series of online market trading sessions.
This is a unique class, yet its format should be familiar from engineering and sciences classes: the theory is taught by means of purposely designed controlled experiments. Here, students will be both participants and observers of the experimental financial markets. The setting therefore provides an invaluable way to both learn to trade financial securities and to reflect on the validity of the theories that were meant to predict the outcomes.
This class was made possible because of 15 years of experimental research with financial markets. Material for the class (software, instructions, excel spreadsheet aids, etc.) was developed with an "Innovation in Education" grant from the provost office at the California Institute of Technology.

• Decision Neuroscience

Decision neuroscience brings together ideas from economics (decision theory, game theory, etc.), neurobiology, computational neuroscience, computer science and psychology to further our understanding of neural processes behind human choice. A deeper understanding of the algorithms encoded in these processes should clarify the enormous heterogeneity in human choice, over time and across individuals. It is hoped that it will shed light on the true causes behind maladaptive choice (“cognitive biases”) in general, and the symptoms of mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, gambling addiction), in particular. Decision neuroscience is a truly interdisciplinary field, where the emphasis is on rigorously controlled experiments and mathematical modeling of choice and neural signals.
The class contains some standard components, such as introductions to decision and game theory, learning theory, neural processes and imaging techniques, and sometimes even a prior on pharmacology. Topics within decision neuroscience are chosen depending on the interests of the students.