Purdue News

October 9, 2002 Purdue colleague and former student can comment on Nobel Prize winner Vernon Smith Vernon Smith, 2002 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, began his academic career at Purdue University's Krannert School of Management. He spent 12 years, from 1955-67, on the West Lafayette campus. Smith began his pioneering research at Purdue in the non-traditional area of economics called experimental economics. When he received an honorary doctorate from Purdue in 1989, he said: "What made Purdue so powerful an experience for me was that I really was free to do my own thing. It wasn't just the administration, but also my colleagues – who didn't for a moment think that, because I wanted to do experiments, my opportunities or resources should be limited." Smith spent part of the 2000 school year at the Krannert School teaching and doing research. He team-taught a class with former student Timothy N. Cason, a Krannert School professor of economics who does research in experimental markets and environmental regulation. Cason today (Wednesday, 10/9) said: "Vernon has made many of the most important contributions in experimental economics, and he continues to work at the forefront of the field. He is using the laboratory to design new markets where markets never existed. For example, much of Vernon's laboratory work in the last decade has focused on designing better markets for trading electricity and gas." We are trying to reach Smith's colleagues from the era of his teaching at Purdue. For information, contact Mike Lillich, Purdue University News Service, (765) 494-2077, mlillich@purdue.edu. CONTACT: Cason, (765) 494-1737, cason@mgmt.purdue.edu.