CERGE-EI recently participated in the ‘Week of Science’ (Tyden vědy) of the Academy of Sciences. The Week of Science is the most extensive scientific festival in the Czech Republic with over 500 events and activities across the whole country.

CERGE-EI participated in the festival by inviting young Czech students to take part in an economic experiment. The experiment allowed the students to experience the scientific research being done on human decision-making.

While in the CERGE-EI computer lab, the students took tests of short-term memory and learned basic information about the significance of short-term memory for everyday life and human intelligence.

The second part of the experiment was devoted directly to human decision making, with the students solving concrete logical problems.  Subsequently they were presented with the correct solution to the problem and learned about the decision making steps required to reach the answer.

The students also got familiar with the concept of the “Keynesian beauty contest,” which illustrates the difference between valuation on the basis of personal preferences and on the basis of perceived popularity in society. The aim of the experiments was to help the pupils understand how experimental economic research is done while also learning the basic role of human decision-making in economic theories and everyday life.