The 8th annual Texas Theory Camp was held at UT-Austin Economics Department on November 16-17, 2019. The camp had eighteen presentations by scholars from eight participating institutions (Rice, SMU, TAMU, UHouston, UT-Austin, UTD, UT-Rio Grande Valley, and UT-San Antonio) and a scholar from USAA. A variety of topics were covered at the conference, such as patent policies, legislative bargaining, information design, mechanism design, and commercialization of microfinance.
Three members from SMU presented their research at the camp. Seth Emblem (SMU PhD student) presented his research on the value of noisy information, Aastha Gupta (SMU PhD student) discussed false advertising of firms in the presence of gullible consumers, and Bo Chen (SMU Visiting Scholar) gave a presentation on optimal disclosure policies in all-pay auctions. Professor Michael Peters from University of British Columbia gave a keynote lecture on “Unobserved Mechanisms.”
The Texas Theory Camp is a regional theory conference on pure and applied economic theory held annually in an institution in Texas. The purpose is to cultivate and foster academic interaction among researchers working in various fields of economic theory in Texas, as well as to provide a forum for (especially young) economic scholars to present their recent research. The First Texas Theory Camp was held at SMU in 2012.