West Coast Experiments Conference May 11, 2012

The organizers of the West Coast Experiments Conference send along the following announcement:

The fifth annual meeting of the West Coast Experiments Conference will be held at the Claremont Resort, near the campus of UC Berkeley, on Friday, May 11, 2012.

For information on registration and local arrangements, please visit: http://ps-experiments.ucr.edu/conference/western.

We encourage anyone with an interest in experiments to attend; graduate students are especially welcome, as well as those who are new to experimental research. The WCE conference is organized more as a methods “workshop” than as a venue to engage in subfield debates. Instead of standard conference presentations, presenters focus in depth on one or two methodological take away points of their experimental work. The goal is to give the audience members applied, practical advice on methods and design in a way that will help them improve their own experimental research.

The WCE meeting is a single day meeting, starting at 9 and ending after dinner. Although we do not have the money to cover travel or lodging expenses, we will provide all meals on that day and we promise a good conversation.

The tentative agenda is:

Morning Panel
• Claire Adida (UCSD): causal effects of ethnicity on voter attitudes and behaviors
• Jas Sekhon (UC Berkeley) and Pradeep Chhibber (UC Berkeley): causal effects of religious practice on trust

First Afernoon Panel
• Daniel Butler (Yale): a seniority committee assignment lottery in Arkansas
• Edward Miguel (UC Berkeley): development aid field experiments in Sierra Leone
• Jim Fearon (Stanford): “Democratic Institutions and Collective Action Capacity: Results from a Field Experiment in Post-Conflict Liberia”

Second Afternoon Panel
• Adam Berinsky (MIT): “Rumors, Truth, and Reality: A Study of Political Misinformation”
• Justin Grimmer (Stanford): a natural experiment on terror alerts and public opinion

We look forward to seeing everyone in Berkeley.

Best,
Kevin Esterling (UC Riverside)
Sean Gailmard (UC Berkeley)
Taeku Lee (UC Berkeley)
Mat McCubbins (USC)
Jas Sekhon (UC Berkeley)
Laura Stoker (UC Berkeley)

West Coast Experiments Website: http://ps-experiments.ucr.edu/conference/western