At 5:44 PM -0600 on 10/2/00, EDUCAUSE wrote:
HOW ECONOMISTS HELP PREDICT BEHAVIOR ONLINE Experimental economics, which has been long been viewed as impractical, is now being deemed relevant due to the rise of the Web. Experimental economists use data to predict market behavior, and are increasingly attracting attention from U.S. business schools, the FCC, and businesses such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard. IBM has opened an experimental-economics lab, which Robert Baseman, IBM's senior research manager, says will help clients develop and deploy their e-markets. University of Arizona professor Vernon Smith, who uses an experimental economics game to study trust relationships, says that such exercises connect to IBM's e-business focus. Smith, who spoke at the dedication of IBM's experimental lab, says that the anonymity of the Internet and e-commerce calls for reputation-building systems to enable trust-based trading. (Wall Street Journal, 02 October 2000)
-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'