Information, Finance and General Equilibrium: Collected Papers on the Experimental Foundations of Economics and Political Science (Economists of the Twentieth Century)

Information, Finance and General Equilibrium brings together the seminal papers on which Charles R. Plott has founded our understanding of experimental economics and political science.

These works reflect the broad and overlapping nature of economics, public economics, public choice and political science. They examine the fundamental problem encountered in of all these subject areas - understanding the nature of allocation under conditions of limited resources and how decision processes, institutions and procedures shape these allocations.

In particular, this volume contains papers placed at the two extremes of economic phenomena: the largest system and the smallest system - multiple markets and the individual. It contains the first evidence that multiple market systems can equilibrate to the general competitive equilibrium while allocating risk bearing and information. It is here that the experimental foundations for rational expectations models are discovered and developed. A challenging paradox results, which leads Plott to question why the behaviour of a system so complex as a multiple market system can be modelled so well when individuals can exhibit behaviours that are so at odds with the theory.

This fascinating work, from a writer at the forefront of experimental economics, will be warmly welcomed by academics, scholars and researchers involved in experimental economics, the methodology of economics, political theory, and political economy.

Charles R. Plott, Edward S. Harkness Professor of Economics and Political Science and Director, Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Political Science, California Institute of Technology, US