The Raymond C. Battalio and John B. Van Huyck Papers document their careers as economists at Texas A & M University. The collection provides an overview of their professional activities, particularly their work as experimental economists and influential figures in developing the field of experimental economics during the 1990s. The papers of Battalio and Van Huyck are combined as one collection given their close working relationship. Their joint work focused on a series of experiments showing the likeliness of coordination failures even when incentives guide participants to attempt to coordinate, the aim being to highlight the difficulty of economic coordination. Experiments by Battalio and Van Huyck include studies of the emergence of conventions, numerous coordination games, and peasant-dictator games, among others.
The collection also includes Battlaio and Van Huyck's communications with other prominent contributors to experimental economics such as Colin Camerer, Charles Holt, John Kagel, Thomas Palfrey, Ariel Rubinstein, Alvin Roth, Larry Samuelson, and Vernon Smith, among others.
Along with their own scholarship and writings, the collection documents Battalio and Van Huyck's roles in the Economic Science Association and Van Huyck's as an editor of Experimental Economics; and Battalio and Van Huyck's department roles, committee work, and teaching contributions in economics at Texas A & M.
Extensive digital materials from Battalio and Van Huyck's experiments are also included in the collection. Original naming conventions and file structures in the digital materials are preserved where possible.
Raymond C. Battalio (1938-2004) was Professor of Economics at Texas A & M University. Battalio joined the department at A & M in 1969. He earned a B.S. in economics from University of California, Berkeley in 1966 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1968 and 1970, respectively. He spent his entire career from 1969 until his death in 2004 at Texas A & M University, where his work with students and faculty, notably John Kagel and Van Huyck, helped to pioneer the field of experimental economics. Battalio served as the president of the Economic Science Association from 1988-1989.
John B. van Huyck (1956-2014) was the Rex B. Grey Professor of Economics at Texas A & M University. He earned a Bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia and his Master's and Ph.D. from Brown University in 1986 under the supervision of Herschel Grossman. He spent his entire career at Texas A & M.
The primary focus of Battalio and Van Huyck's joint work, and mentoring of students, was the study of coordination failures in a variety of settings. Battalio's work using experiments began in the 1970s with the use of animal test subjects, and tests of consumer demand theory with John Kagel. The nature of his work using experiments had broad appeal and was widely published in economics and psychology journals. Van Huyck's early work with Herschel Grossman was on sovereign debt and macroeconomics. His work in macroeconomics led to an interest in coordination failures and studying these specifically through experiments with Battalio. Van Huyck was active in the Economic Science Association and with the journal Experimental Economics.
