The Pittsburgh Experimental Economics Laboratory (PEEL) celebrated its grand reopening last week following substantial renovation. Led by PEEL Director Lise Vesterlund, the renovations allow Pitt to continue to lead as one of the preeminent experimental economics research universities in the country.
Alvin Roth, winner of the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, was on site to celebrate the event. Roth, who was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Economics at Pitt through the 1980s and 90s and is now a professor at Stanford University, founded the lab in 1988 alongside then-Pitt Professor John Kagel. His original research at PEEL led to his Nobel Prize for market design and to his design of the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) and the New England Program for Kidney Exchange.
“Experiments are very powerful, and I think this [lab] is a huge advantage,” Roth said. “For a long time, economists thought of data as something that governments collected […] but when you do experiments, you can carefully control for what you think are relevant differences and understand causes much better.”
Vesterlund, who has held the Mellon chair in economics since 2007, has conducted countless experiments in the lab. Particularly influential has been her research assessing the impact of work assignment on gender differences in advancement, research that lead to her award-winning co-authored book The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work.
Vesterlund says a well-functioning lab is the foundation for Pitt’s strong economics department. “PEEL is a world-renowned experimental economics laboratory. It has been the home to countless seminal research findings. Findings that seeded fields in the profession and improved the way we design markets and organizations. Few institutions can maintain a well-functioning lab, and PEEL has been essential in drawing an exceptionally strong group of scholars to Pitt. The renovation will ensure that the University of Pittsburgh continues to be the center for cutting-edge research in experimental economics.”
The ceremony included opening remarks from Dean Adam Leibovich before Vesterlund and Roth cut the ribbon, formally re-opening the lab. The renovated lab comprises 40 computer kiosks, where participants can engage with state-of-the-art research software and make choices that inform us about human decision-making.
To learn more about research being conducted in the lab, you can visit the PEEL website.