Nobel laureate Vernon Smith will speak at an event hosted by Vanderbilt Economics Association (VEA) at 4 p.m. CST on Tuesday, March 16. 

Smith is a professor of economics and law at Chapman University in Orange, California, and the George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Finance and Economics. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 “for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms.”

Smith’s Tuesday lecture, titled “Classical Theory of How People Form/Discover Prices in Markets, Contrast with Neoclassical and Modern Price Theory,” is based on his joint work with Sabiou Inoua, a predoctoral research associate in the Economic Science Institute at Chapman University. Smith aims to discuss the process that governs price formation in consumer final demand markets.

“We were looking for a very interesting and knowledgeable economics speaker who would discuss their work with us,” VEA co-founder and president senior Christian Moran said. “I was personally really surprised but ecstatic that he said yes. Having these types of speakers is not only great for VEA but Vanderbilt as well.”

VEA was unofficially founded in January of 2020 but became an official student organization in Fall 2020, per Moran.

Co-founder junior Daniel Chu also commented on the significance of VEA’s new presence on campus.

“It’s really nice to have a community to talk about the study of economics and what it means for our society,” Chu said. “VEA is not just about finance or business but about economics as a whole. I’ve never found a community that has been purely interested in economics/theoretical economics at Vanderbilt, but VEA has put together this amazing community.”