James C. Cox, Ph.D.
Experimental Economics
Georgia State University
Recruited: 2005
Decision making under risk is ubiquitous in economic, medical and military contexts. Dr. Cox's theoretical and experimental research addresses plausibility problems with prominent models of decision under risk that are widely applied in these important contexts. His research interests include:
- Experimental and behavioral economics
- Foundations of theories of decision making under risk
- Game theory, auctions, and procurement contracting
- Applications of behavioral economics to healthcare delivery
- Economics of electronic commerce and automated agent technology
- Economics of trust, reciprocity and altruism
- Digital libraries that incorporate interactive software and automated agents
Research
Dr. Cox's lab is simultaneously pursuing frontier research and developing new methods for teaching economics. Experimental economics provides the foundation for both activities. In research, experiments with human subjects support current development of economics as an empirical science. In teaching, experiments support active learning by students. Both research and teaching experiments are conducted in the physical laboratory and on the virtual laboratory contained in EconPort, the active-objects digital library of economics. Dr. Cox's lab is involved in a multi-year series of National Dissemination Workshops that teach university and college faculty how to use EconPort in their teaching and research.
Problems made apparent by concavity and convexity calibration are especially severe in the presence of scale differences between experiment data and field applications. This experimental research on trust and reciprocity has led to develop new theory for decision making environments characterized by opportunities for reciprocal altruism and new protocols for the identification of trust and trustworthiness.
Choosing Georgia
Georgia’s research universities and the Georgia Research Alliance provide strong institutional and financial support for innovative research. They add resources to those provided by grants from external sources rather than extracting resources from the grants, as is often done elsewhere.
