The LCSS regular workshop

The regular working seminar of LCSS took place on April 21, 2011. It covered the discussion of economic experiments on the provision of public goods.

The regular working seminar of LCSS took place on April 21, 2011. It covered the discussion of economic experiments on the provision of public goods. For a start, Nadezhda Shilova, Junior Research Fellow of Laboratory of Industrial Market Studies of HSE, expounded the heart of the problem describing various economic experiments, which are usually carried out in specially equipped laboratories. Volunteers take their seats in a lab, where they do not see each other, and they play a certain game (its conditions are changed depending on goals and objectives of the experiment). For example, each player is given 50 tokens. It is proposed to invest a certain sum to the total cash, which is then multiplied by one and a half, for instance, and distributed equally to all players. In fact, according to microeconomic theory, a player has two strategies: contribute money or not contribute, that is to be the free rider. There is often a punishment for free riders in such experiments.

After that Alexei Zakharov, Senior Research Fellow of LCSS, told about the study, which they are going to realize with Nadezhda and their colleagues. The main research questions of this study are the following: whether there is a discrimination against migrants by native population and how fast the process of integration of migrants occurs. It is supposed to answer these questions by means of the experiment, which basic principles are described above. However, several points stay unclear for researches for the present. These issues were submitted to the audience: particularly, how to recruit respondents for the experiment and what Diasporas are needed to examine in the first place. There were several constructive comments from the audience, but a definite answer to these questions about the design of the planned experiment, unfortunately, failed to obtain.