Economics serving society

The LEEP (Paris Experimental Economics Laboratory)

The Paris School of Econmics has its own experimental laboratory: the LEEP (Laboratoire d’Economie Expérimentale de Paris).
>> Visit the LEEP website

Taking part in experiments at the LEEP : No qualifications are needed to take part in experiments. Participation in experiments is voluntary and allows participants to gain sums of money which depend on the decisions that they take, as well as the decisions taken by other participants.
>> Details on how to sign up and additional practical information are available at the following website: http://leep.univ-paris1.fr/orsee/public/

Contacts : For further information, please contact Nicolas Jacquemet (nicolas.jacquemet univ-paris1.fr) and Jean-Christophe Vergnaud (vergnaud univ-paris1.fr).

Seminar : The Economics and Psychology Seminar is dedicated to research in behavioral and experimental economics


A diversity of topics covered

One of the aims of experimental economics is to test, and possibly amend, traditional assumptions in microeconomics, such as the one that presents individuals as purely selfish beings with perfect rationality and self-control.

Second, experimental economics sheds new light on the decision-making of subjects in strategic interaction environments, thus mobilizing game theory. As an example, most of the auction procedures used by different governments to sell, for example, wavelengths for mobile telephony or radio transmission, have been tested in the laboratory. In general, economic engineering (consisting of proposing exchange mechanisms, intermediation, etc., appropriate to different situations) has greatly benefited from this new tool. Macroeconomics has also made more occasional use of experimental economics.

This recognition of the important role played by experimental economics was recently reflected in a Nobel Prize awarded in 2002 to psychologist Daniel Kahneman and market structure experimentalist Vernon Smith.

Based on experimental results (both in economics and psychology) a new field of research, behavioral economics, has gained increasing importance over the last twenty years.