Contact:
Leah Seupersad, 404-413-1354
University Relations
ATLANTA — Economists and political scientists from across the United States will meet at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School Friday (April 20) to attend the university's first multidisciplinary conference focusing on behavioral experiments in Latin America.
The goal of the conference, titled "Experiments for Export? Behavioral Experiments in Latin America," is to present new research on and discuss the challenges of using behavioral experiments to study trust, fairness and altruism in developing countries.
"The overarching aim of this conference is to understand how people in Latin America and other developing countries can better overcome social barriers to trust, cooperation, and fairness," said Ryan Carlin, an assistant professor of political science at GSU. "We are starting to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue over how to adjust behavioral experiments, which are typically studied in laboratories, to more realistic contexts where these questions are most urgent."
The conference will include five panels such as "The Limits of Taking the Lab to the Field" and "Recent Experimental Work in Latin America." Among the experts set to speak on the panels are GSU economics professor, James Cox; Catherine Eckel, an economist from University of Texas at Dallas; Donald Green, a political scientist from Columbia University; and Raymond Duch, a political scientist from Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
"Closer to home, the conference marks an important step in the growing scholarly collaboration between political scientists and economists here at GSU," Carlin said.
This conference, which Carlin and Cox helped to organize at GSU, is sponsored by a joint grant from the Mellon Foundation and the Latin American Studies Association, and a conference grant from GSU's University Research Services and Administration.
Seating is limited. To attend, e-mail Carlin at rcarlin@gsu.edu or James Cox at jccox@gsu.edu.