88-702  Seminar in Behavioral Economics
Dr. George Loewenstein
This Ph.D course will focus on human choice.  Topics to be covered include utility theory, multiattribute choice, decision making under uncertainty, intertemporal choice and social utility (concern for others' payoffs). In each of these areas, we will survey the latest empirical research and formal models of choice.  We will evaluate each model's ability to explain the relevant data, its normative status, and will discuss promising directions for future research.  Course requirements include class presentations and a final project. A graduate -level course in microeconomics is highly recommended as well as statistical and mathematical sophistication.

88-703  Seminar in Human Judgement and Decision Making
Dr. Robyn Dawes
Researchers in the areas of human judgment and behavioral decision make the claim to have established a field based on empirically validated principles of judgment and choice in the face of uncertainty.  The purpose of this course is to examine the research evidence claimed to demonstrate these principles.  The material is divided into seven modules. Students will read Dawes’ Rational Choice in an Uncertain World for background information and then read five to seven of the best-known research papers that support (or fail to support) the conclusions in each module.  At the end of each, students are expected to hand in two short critiques (e.g. four pages on the average) of two of the research papers covered in the module and a longer critique (usually around seven pages) of one of them.  Each minor critique will be graded on a 0-5 basis while the major one will be graded on a 0-10 basis.  Then, in lieu of a final exam, each student will expand on previous critiques in one or two “final papers.”  These papers will be scored on a 0-40 basis.  Thus, there are a total of 180 points possible.   The threshhold between an A- and a B+ is 120 points.  All students are expected to score at least 90 points.  The final paper substitutes for a final exam.

88-706   Seminar in Game Theory
Dr. Cristina Bicchieri, Dr. Robyn Dawes
The course will deal exclusively with non-cooperative games. The first half will develop the basic theory; in the second half special topics will be discussed. Throughout the emphasis will be on concepts and results rather than detailed technical proofs. This is an introductory course and no significant previous exposure to game theory will be assumed. This course is cross-listed as 80-705 with the Philosophy Department.

88-722   Emotion & Social Behavior
Dr. Jennifer Lerner and Dr. Margaret Clark
This is an advanced seminar on emotion and social behavior for graduate students in the Psychology or  Social and Decision Sciences departments. The course is new and the exact contents are still being developed.  Examples of questions likely to be addressed are: What is an emotion? How might one differentiate such things as emotions, moods, and temperaments? What are the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral determinants of emotions? What are the physiological, cognitive and behavioral consequences of emotions? How do individuals' emotional lives differ (e.g. men's versus women's; secure versus insecure individuals; people in stable relationships versus those in unstable relationships)? How does relationship context influence emotion and how does emotion influence relationships?  There is no required textbook. Readings will include scholarly chapters and original empirical articles. Class will consist of discussion, debate and occasional focused lectures. Active participation is a must. Grade will be based on participation and written assignments. Goals include:  a) students mastering some of the important literature in this area, b) students becoming more critical consumers of original theoretical and empirical work, c) regular and active participation in class, and d) improvement of students' skills at writing in a clear, logical, and convincing manner. Prerequisites: 85-241 (Social Psychology) or 85-251 (Personality Psychology), and 85-340 (Research Methods in Social/Personality) or Reason, Passion, and Cognition (88-120) or permission of the instructor.

88-723  Seminar in Experiments in Strategic Interaction
(new course; no description available at this time)

88-725   Seminar in Social & Political Philosophy
Dr. Cristina Bicchieri
The seminar discusses classical and contemporary theories of value and analyses of value formationas well as the nature of value conflict. This course is cross-listed as 80-517/817 with the Philosophy Department.

88-730   Behavioral Decision Making's Philosophy of Science
Dr. Baruch Fischhoff
The course will look at the mutual implications of behavioral decision making and the philosophy of science (from the perspective of the role played by criticism in the growth of knowledge). It will consider the limits to decision making, as those emerge in empirical studies, in terms of their implications for normative accounts (regarding how decisions should be made). It will consider the cognitive plausibility and advisability of philosophical accounts of how science should proceed, in the light of these studies. It will consider the tension between psychology and economics in terms of general tensions in the development of the sciences. The readings will be drawn from philosophy and behavioral decision making, in order to provide essential background in each. Nonetheless, the course will be most valuable to students who know one perspective reasonably well. Grades will be based on class participation and either three 10-page research papers or one report on an empirical study. No prerequisites.

88-740 Economics of Entrepreneurship in High Technology Industries
Dr. Wes Cohen
This course considers theories and evidence from the economics, business strategy and related literatures (including psychology and organizational behavior) that allow some understanding of the conditions affecting entry and performance of new firms in high technology industries. The course will be taught from an academic rather than practitioner perspective. Nonetheless, it should provide prospective entrepreneurs with information, tools and frameworks for thinking about the prospects for successful start-ups in selected industries. The course will cover the concept of barriers to entry, the advantages and disadvantages of small firm size for technological competition, the implications of the evolutionary stage of industries for entry, the role of patents in providing the basis for successful entry, venture capital, commercial applications of university research, the  decision making biases that can characterize the behavior of both entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists who finance them, and the impact of small firms on rates of technical advance. Prerequisite: Principles of Economics or equivalent.

88-743 Economics of Technological Change
Dr. Wes Cohen
This course will consider the determination of innovative activity and performance, and the effect of innovation on productivity, economic growth, and social welfare. We will focus particularly on the characteristics of markets and firms that influence industrial innovation. Such characteristics include, for example, market concentration, firm size, the strength of patent protection, and the vitality of the basic science and technology underlying innovation in a given industry. We will also study the economics of the adoption and diffusion of innovation. In addition to drawing on economic theory, the course will emphasize empirical studies of innovation and technological change, and will selectively exploit case study and institutional studies.   The course grade is based on two exams, a   research paper and class participation. Expected class size 25. The course is open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Prerequisites include either undergraduate or graduate level microeconomics, or 88-220 (Policy Analysis I) and 88-221 (Policy Analysis II), or 88-342.

88-745 Seminar in Organizational Management & Information Security
Dr. Kathleen Carley
How should organizations be designed to reduce their vulnerability to information errors? Information security is both a technological and organizational issue. The most secure technology in the world won't help if, for example, employees give out their passwords. This course concentrates on the organizational issues related to security. Issues of security at the individual, organizational and inter-organizational level will be discussed. You will learn to use social network techniques for mapping and analyzing the knowledge network, information network, and the communication network within and among organizations. Using these network vulnerability assessments of hypothetical organizations will be conducted. Topics covered include critical employees, redundancy, cascade effects, organizational memory, organizational learning, information diffusion, belief structures, and information warfare.
This course examines the human side of information security management. The structure of organizations, the incentives individuals face within organizations, the social networks they build, the training they receive, and the degree of autonomy and authority with which they operate all affect an organization's exposure to information security risks. Further, there is a relationship between information security/vulnerability and organizational adaptation, flexibility, and learning. This course examines these issues from the organizational management perspective. Risk simulation is developed as a tool to understand the degree of organizational exposure.
Priority access to this course will be given to Ph.D. students, masters students, and IDS seniors. Grading may be based mainly on a homework assignments, attendance, in-class participation, and performance in the security game. No prior knowledge of organizations or security are needed.

88-748 Seminar in Social Cognition
Dr. Jennifer Lerner
Recent theory and research in social cognition reveals that judgmentoutcomes hinge on whether individuals use relatively automatic/heuristic/shallow information processing or relatively controlled/systematic/deep information processing. One process is not necessarily better than the other. Rather, the causes and consequences of alternative modes of social information processing are themselves socially contingent. We will consider these processes in the context of: attitude formation and change, attributions of causality and responsibility, person perception (including stereotyping), affect and self regulation, and social influence in groups. Shelly Chaiken and Yaacov Trope?s (1999) edited volume, Dual process theories in social cognition, serves as the primary text. Additional readings from empirical journals will supplement that volume. Course components include participation in discussion of assigned readings, a presentation to the seminar on a social-cognition topic relevant to your interests, and a term paper (10-15 pages). This paper can either (a) review an empirical literature (b) apply some readings to a practical problem, or (c) propose a more focused empirical investigation of an issue related to social cognition.

88-750 Seminar in Computational Modeling of Organizational Technology & Society
Dr. Kathleen Carley
Increasingly computer simulation, computational modeling, and emulation is being used to design, assess, understand, and theorize about complex social, socio-technical, policy, organizational, and group systems. In both universities and the corporate world simulations are playing a growing role as the tool for reasoning about change, adaptation, evolution, and learning. This course prepares you to interpret the results from and to design such models.
This course teaches the student how to design and analyze   computational models and how to evaluate the results of other computational models. Issues covered include:  representation of groups, representation of organizational structure, representation of communication, representation of information and knowledge representation of technology, representation of task, tracking information flow and belief changes, optimization models, canonical tasks, performance measures, data capturing, virtual experiments, analysis, docking, levels and types of validation, and social turing tests. Illustrative models will be drawn from recent publications in the areas of computational organization theory, computational sociology, computational economics, and other simulation areas in the domains of interest to the students.
This course is cross-listed as 39-750 with CIT. Access to this course will be given to Ph.D. students, masters students, junior and senior undergraduates in all colleges. Grading may be based mainly on a homework assignments, attendance, in-class participation, and final project. No prior knowledge of social science or modeling is required. This course does not teach programming.

88-752 Seminar in Organizational Theory
Dr. Kathleen Carley
Individuals and technology shape and are shaped by organizations. What are the basic processes? What is the role of coordination, communication, power, social networks, tasks, goals in affecting group and organizational behavior? What are the basic methodological and theoretical concerns?  What will the organizations of the next century look like? These and related concerns will be examined in this course.
This course provides an overview of the dominant perspectives on organizational theory from a macro perspective. Both classic historical treatments of organizations and  modern approaches and concerns in the area are covered. Theoretical perspectives covered include: structuralism, information processing, resource dependency, population ecology, networks, open and closed systems, and institutionalism. In addition, a variety of substantive and methodological topic areas that are having a major impact on the field are addressed: Organizational Learning, Organizations and Technology, Communication in Organizations, Computational Organization Theory, Organizational Evolution & Change, and Social and Organizational Networks. Priority access to this course will be given to Ph.D. students, masters students, and undergraduate seniors. Grading may be based mainly on a term paper, attendance, and paper synopses. No prior knowledge of organizational theory is required.

88-756 Communication in Groups and Organizations
Dr. Robert Kraut
People in groups and organizations spend most of their time communicating. Technology is expanding the comunication options and the communiction community. This seminar will survey research and theory about communication within and among organizations. We will includesuch topics as coordination in conversation, nonverbal communication, facework, group decision making, influence and persuasion, structural influences on communication, diffusion of innovation, communicationto manage the organizational environment, communication channels and electronic communication. Students will be expected to propose and pretest a research project, with the aim of eventual publication.

88-770 Computer Supported Collaborative Work
Dr. Robert Kraut
Most of the work that people do requires some degree of coordination and communication with others—some kind of teamwork. But the development of technology to support teamwork has proven to be a considerable challenge in practice. Successful designs require (1) Social psychological insight into group processes, (2) Computer science insight into mechanisms to achieve coordination, sharing, and communication, and (3) HCI design insight. In the course, problems in group coordination and the classes of systems attempting to overcome these problems are examined. We include (1) group decision support systems, (2) organizational memory systems, (3) video conferencing systems, (4) systems for creating virtual spaces, and (5) work flow and other systems to structure interaction. For each topic area, we consider relevant theoretical and empirical results concerning group behavior from social psychology and related fields which should inform system design, including basic phenomena of group behavior such as social loafing, the effect of video, the use of MUDs, communication and memory within organizations, group decision making, and large electronic groups. We also examine technical topics related to the design and implementation of these systems, including management of shared objects (distributed object models, interpretation, versioning, concurrency control), communication and awareness (asynchronous and synchronous), workflow and notification (event models), and conventional shared structures (such as hypertext, databases, MUD rooms, discourse structure, and shared document databases). These topics are familiar themes in computer science; the treatment in the course focuses on their manifestation in the design of teamwork support systems. For example, locking strategies for collaborative systems can be more permissive than those used in traditional databases and operating systems.
The course has a research focus; students should leave with a clearer idea about important research topics in CSCW and will have conducted a preliminary project of their own. Many of the readings will be drawn from the recent CSCW conference proceedings. The course is suitable for both social science and engineering-oriented graduate students. This course is cross-listed as 05-810 with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and as 47-957 with GSIA.