For the 3rd year in a row, I've had the privileged to co-teach a summer school for the University of Bologna in Italy with Rudy Nayga, Andreas Drichoutis, and Maurizio Canavari. The topic of the school is experimental auctions, which is a method used to measure consumer preferences and study consumer behavior.
We have a great group of students this year from Italy, Germany, Sweden, France, South Africa, China, Thailand, and the U.S, among other places. Here are a few of us learning a bit about the history of Bologna on our day off.
We also caught a couple races at the Dino and Enzo Ferrari Autodrome race track in Imola. After the Ferrari's and Lamborghini's cleared the track, they had an interesting race with Mini Coopers.
Today we are back at work thinking about economics, consumer behavior, food policy, and food marketing.
My colleagues have had a good time harassing me about eating horse meat (yes, I willingly ate some two days ago and I'm pleased to say it was perfectly eatable as I've previously argued) and organics (for my latest take on that one see here), and why Americans eat differently than Europeans.
Here's the whole group just outside the classroom:
