Personal

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT FOR ME?

If you were to ask me about what is most important in my life, my answer would be my faith in Jesus Christ! Yes, I am a believer who also happened to be a scientist. If you get to know me, you will learn that I am not a complicated person. I just want to live a life that fully reflects the teachings of Christ and His character.

I want to live my life with full integrity and commitment to people that I love, values that I hold, and faith that I have, so that when my life is over I would not be ashamed of it. I want to live my life to the fullest, just as it has been put in the song by Chris Tomlin: "I want to live like there's no tomorrow, I want to dance like no one's around, I want to sing like nobody's listening, before I lay my body down. I want to give like I have plenty, I want to love like I'm not afraid, I want to be the man I was meant to be, I want to be the way I was made."

For me life is about relationships. In the photo below are me (the tall guy on the left) and the three people who have greatly influenced my academic career (from right to left): Tim Cason (my former advisor, mentor, coauthor and friend), Vernon Smith (the 2002 Nobel Prize winner, my coauthor and friend), and Jingjing Zhang (my coauthor and friend).

WHAT DO I LIKE TO DO BESIDES RESEARCH AND TEACHING?

Although research and teaching are a big part of my life, I also live an active life outside of academia. I am very involved in our local church. I have a number of hobbies, including travelling, music, chess. In my free time, if such exists, I play the guitar and even used to write songs. I really enjoy playing competitive sports such as volleyball, ping-pong, pool. Other recreational sports that I enjoy are swimming, skiing, snowboarding, ice-skating, roller-blading, and sailing.

WHY AM I A BEHAVIORAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMIST?

My interest in behavioral economics can be traced all the way to my childhood. I started playing chess when I was 6. By the age of 12, I won more than two dozen championships and started to play professionally. Nevertheless, I decided not to pursue a career in chess, but instead, I decided to focus on studying. Although I did not pursue a career in chess, I became fascinated with the game because it involved a complex way of strategic reasoning: you have to think many moves ahead of your opponent in order to win the game.

Later, as a student in a game theory class, I learned that games such as chess and checkers have a dominance-solvable Nash equilibrium. In fact, the game of checkers has already been solved using a game-tree search algorithm. The rational play (neither player makes a mistake) results in a draw. This finding fascinated me and it made me think why do people still play checkers? The answer came from behavioral economics: although Nash equilibrium combined with utility-maximizing preferences provides clear theoretical predictions, people are not unboundedly rational, they make mistakes, have limited foresight, and care about the well-being of others. Thus, it was only natural for me to pursue behavioral economics. As a behavioral and experimental economist, I have the luxury of experimentally studying different behavioral issues which are often ignored by the theory. This allows me to better explain why people behave in certain, sometimes irrational, ways.

It is absolutely fascinating to studying human behavior!