Chicago Price Theory

UC Experiments

UC Experiments is an initiative created within the Becker Center by Professor Steve Levitt to establish and maintain a research lab for running behavioral and economic experiments. The program works to create a pool of participants who are willing to participate in studies, and then run experiments using these participants. Professor John List, a leading scholar in field experiments, helps lead the lab.  

The initiative began because it can be difficult to rally enough participants to create a meaningful data set on a campus the size of the University of Chicago. By creating a "lab" with a pool of participant, it is easier to get a meaningful sample size and to target experiments to particular groups, allowing researchers to generate cleaner data sets. 

An additional advantage UC Experiments offers is greater protection of subjects’ identities, since staff conducting the experiments are separate from the researchers analyzing the data to draw conclusions. This helps ensure compliance with the Institutional Review Board requirements. 

The program also offers postdoctoral positions for young scholars interested in experimental economics. Current postdoctoral scholars are: