Experimental economic summary paper - Essay Example

10 March One, Two, (Three), Infinity Newspaper and Lab Beauty-Contest Experiments Summary: The research fundamentally evaluated the usability of newspapers as research tools. The researchers classified the explanations offered by the research participants for their respective choices of response, quantified the frequencies of explanations, and studied the patterns of reasoning which most past studies did not achieve. Three Newspaper experiments were carried out. Data from the respondents was collected through a Beauty-contest game in which every player had to simultaneously select any decimal number from 0 to 100.

The data and comments were analyzed in accordance with 5 different sorts of reasoning processes, of which two were centered on the theoretical analysis of game. It was found that the respondents were provided with much bigger rewards in the newspaper research as compared to the lab research. The research identified the existence of parallelism between the field and lab. The researchers also studied the thought processes of the research participants who were involved in the game. The respondents’ choice of subjects and comments were analyzed.

In addition to that, the research conducted an in-depth analysis of the newspaper experiments and concluded that they are a potential means of conducting research and the response through newspapers is marvelous. One of the results of the research that I found quite interesting was the researchers’ increased confidence in the newspaper research. I personally think that the lab research is too hectic. Difficulty of approaching the required individuals is one potential factor that complicates the process of research and becomes a fundamental cause of the disinterest of many researchers in the process.

With the researchers’ confidence in newspaper research, researchers are expected to make frequent use of it for data collection as it offers a lot of advantages and makes the research process simple and convenient for the researchers. Discussion question: What benefits does newspaper research offer that the lab research does not? Newspaper research offers innumerable benefits over the lab research. Data collection is the most hectic and time consuming stage of conventional lab research. Newspaper research provides the researcher with the opportunity to collect data in minimum time and that too, with the least inconvenience.

Newspaper research saves all the expenses that conventionally go into traveling and approaching the respondents in the typical lab research. In addition to that, the sample size in a newspaper research is undoubtedly larger than that in the lab research. In the newspaper research, respondents can be made to send their response to the researcher unlike the lab research, in which the researcher has to bear all the pain of questionnaire distribution and collection from the respondents. Moreover, newspaper research allows the researcher to retrieve data from a much more heterogeneous population than the respondents involved in ordinary lab researches.

As concluded in the research conducted by (Bosch-Domenech et al), there does exist parallelism between the newspaper research and the lab research, therefore, newspapers should frequently be employed as a means for conducting research owing to the great benefit the practice offers. Works Cited: Bosch-Domenech, Antoni; Montalvo, Jose G.; Nagel, Rosemarie, and Satorra, Albert. “One, Two, (Three), Infinity, … : Newspaper and Lab Beauty-Contest Experiments.” The American Economic Review. vol. 92. no. 5. pp.

1687-1701. 2002.