Florida State University’s XS/FS Experimental Laboratory hosted the 2025 NBER/CEME Decentralization Conference at Florida State University on April 24 – 26, 2025, with the theme “Artificial Intelligence, Mechanism Design and Human Behavior: Experiments and Theory.”
The 2025 Decentralization Conference is a successor to the 2024 Decentralization Conference, which was held at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and had a theme of “Mechanism Design with AI and Distributed Ledgers.” The objective of this year’s symposium was to further explore the potential collaborations and contributions between mechanism design theory, experimental economics method, and artificial intelligence research.
Researchers from diverse disciplines were encouraged to attend and potentially submit an extended abstract/paper for consideration. Ten well-developed abstracts or papers were accepted for presentation at the conference, with a final talk being reserved for the plenary speaker. A limited number of travel grants were provided to early-career scholars and graduate students who wished to attend and facilitate new research in these areas.
“Artificial Intelligence is already beginning to impact people’s lives in many ways,” said Anthony Kwasnica, Ph.D., the current Rod and Hope Brim Eminent Scholar Chair in Economics and the cluster director for the XS/FS: Experimental Social Science Lab. “The conference highlighted cutting-edge research on important issues related understanding the potential impact of AI on your lives.” In addition to being one of three lead organizers of the conference, Dr. Kwasnica is also a professor in the Department of Economics.
Luke Boosey, Ph.D., and Mark Issac, Ph.D., were the other lead organizers of this conference. Dr. Boosey is an associate professor in the Department of Economics, the lab director for the XS/FS Experimental Social Science Laboratory, and the department’s graduate placement director. Dr. Issac is a professor in the Department of Economics and the current John and Hallie Quinn Eminent Scholar Chair.
The conference included 11 invited talks. They received more than 40 submissions from researchers in economics and related disciplines and selected ten for the main conference, which took place on Friday and Saturday. The final talk was given by Sida Peng, Ph.D., from the Office of the Chief Economist at Microsoft, who provided an industry perspective on how AI is being adopted. Other issues, such as how people respond to AI advice and how well AI mimics real human behavior in strategic settings, were just a few examples of the types of questions examined. The conference also actively engaged early-career scholars interested in research in this area, as highlighted by the poster session of projects held following Dr. Peng’s talk.
Support for the event came from the College of Social Science and Public Policy (COSSPP), the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and the Brim and Quinn endowments, which fund Dr. Kwasnica’s and Dr. Isaac’s eminent scholar chair positions. The conference will also result in the publication of a volume in a book series named “Research in Experimental Economics on AI and Economics” edited by Dr. Kwasnica and Tanya Rosenblat, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Michigan.
The XS/FS Experimental Social Science Laboratory, housed in the Bellamy Building and the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy at FSU, employs experimental methods to investigate how individuals and groups make choices in various situations. Their goals are to gain insights into how decisions are made and to inform policymaking in economics, political science, and business. It supports an interdisciplinary set of researchers across various fields, including economics, political science, and accounting.
For more information about the XS/FS Lab, visit cosspp.fsu.edu/xsfs.