Exams, LSE and economic experiments

Despite all my worries about the winter exams, I got very good results in the end and my average is still First. The exam from International Political Economy scared me most, as it is in fact applied economy socialism, with Marx occupying most of the syllabus. Thankfully Exeter University proved again to be liberal and awarded my vast knowledge despite the critical perspective with a First. I started my new modules straight after the exams ended. Their only fault is that they are mainly essay bases and so I will have to hand in thirteen essays this term, which I find rather exhaustive.

The exam hall with six hundred students.

The announcement of my offer for a postgraduate study at London School of Economics was among the best events of this semester. Next year, I wish to study the MSc Local Economic Development Development programmer, which is course exactly fulfilling all my academic, professional and extracurricular dreams. Whether I will finally enrol at the LSE next September is still dependent on my final results and on the ability to source the financial means for the tuition fees and London living costs. However, I see the offer in itself as a great achievement validating my academic performance and extracurricular endeavours during my undergraduate studies. I am truly grateful to all those who helped me to this offer – along the academic staff here at Exeter it is mostly the Kellner Family Foundation that had been supporting me during my previous studies until today and thus enabled my success.

This semester brought me one new interesting activity that I participate at. It is economic experiments at the local behavioural laboratory. Most of them have the aim to observe the decisions of an individual in a group without communicating with the others. The decisions thus have to be done individually only presuming the reactions of others. Experiments modelling the functioning of financial markets are common. They require cooperation, which however can not be coordinated in any way. Participants are motivated by a financial reward, which of course depends on their performance in the simulation game. I usually earn enough money to pay for a good lunch on campus.

These economic experiments also have a moral level for me. Some of them test, how much participants dare to cheat the rules when they know that there is only limited probability of sanctions. Last Monday I attended and experiment just after a lecture for the module Ethics & Organization, which teaches us about different philosophical approaches to moral and ethical conduct in business. The case study of the TATA conglomerate was very interesting, since the company denies doing any charity work, but on the other hand helps the society by building schools and hospitals as part of its business plan rather than only having a devoted CSR fund. At this lecture, we also discussed situations in which it is justifiable to cheat the official rules, analysing the case of a Scottish ship yard owner, who saved the employment in the town by giving a bribe, despite going to jail for it. Lets however get back to the experiment I visited after this lecture. It was about the behaviour of small businesses while filing tax documentation. We received guidelines about filling the forms and claims that can be deduced. The system is quite complicated, especially when it comes to vehicles, which can be deduced in several ways, depending on their type and many other factors. The point of the experiment was not to observe who can handle paperwork, but to see under what conditions people would dare to claim higher deducible costs, since the probability of being audited was only 50% and detected cheaters would be penalized. I of course had to confirm with all the rules after the morning lecture on ethics and I filled in everything correctly as to best of my limited knowledge. I was lucky that my claim was not audited, as I claimed more than I would have deserved, due to making a few mistakes in the rules. The lesson from this experiment is that it pays of to act morally and fairly despite not knowing the inputs and impacts completely.