Experimental Research Lab

The Economics Department at SMU is home to the Laboratory for Research in Experimental Economics (LREE). The lab is led by Professor Tim Salmon and Assistant Professor Danila Serra. There are currently four PhD students working on dissertations through the LREE and the lab has hosted multiple guest researchers from other Universities who have also used the lab to conduct research. The research conducted in the lab is based on using economic experiments to better understand human behavior. Economic experiments involve bringing in voluntary participants to the laboratory and placing them in a decision making environment designed to replicate one the researchers wish to better understand. Subjects are paid for the participation with their earnings depending on their choices made in the experiment. Research conducted in the LREE is investigating a wide range of issues including corruption, governance and accountability, auctions and procurement mechanisms, employee motivation, effect of inequality, gender pay equality and female student participation in more technical disciplines such as economics.

Professors Salmon and Serra with graduate students Erik Hille, Kuangli Xie, and Jing Li