Dr. John Van Huyck Fellows
To honor the memory and legacy of Dr. John Van Huyck, the Dr. John Van Huyck Fellows Program provides support for a PhD student in the TAMU Department of Economics to carry out experimental research. The Dr. John Van Huyck Fellows Endowed Program was established through the generous philanthropy of Mr. Alfred P. Van Huyck and Mrs. Nancy Van Huyck Chockley. The Program provides up to $5,000 of funding for laboratory experiments conducted in the Economic Research Laboratory or for field experiments.
In the last two years we have unfortunately been unable to grant the Dr. John Van Huyck Endowed Fellowship on a regular timeline. In response, the committee has decided to give this year’s award to two students, Sora Youn and Jinliang Liu.
Sora Youn is a rising 5th year student whose research focuses on using Experimental Economics methodology to test models of Behavioral Game Theory. Her award-winning proposal involved a project on mitigating the overconfidence of managers in decision-making. Her previous work had identified an experimental setting where subjects robustly exhibited overconfidence. Her proposal looks to see if organization structure that includes additional parties in the decision-making process may mitigate manager bias, as managers may learn better from evaluating the decisions of others.
Jinliang Liu is a rising 5th year student whose research focuses on using Experimental Economics Methodology to investigate the performance of mechanisms and institutions. His award-winning proposal looks to solve a persistent problem in Experimental Economics, mainly that individuals do not reliably give truthful valuations of items, even when doing so is in their economic best interest. While his previous research has tested potential theoretical solutions to this problem, none have performed better than the standard methodological approach. Recent papers have provided new empirical evidence of better approaches, but none have been tested in a standardized laboratory setting. Jinliang’s proposal provides the means to have the largest comprehensive standardized test of all such mechanisms.
Congratulations, Sora and Jinliang! We look forward to seeing the research that will be conducted as a result of this fellowship.
If you would like to contribute to the The Dr. John Van Huyck Fellows Endowed Program, please make your gift payable to the Texas A&M Foundation.