Vernon Smith to Work on Californian Public Policy

The news that Vernon Smith is departing GMU for Chapman Univeristy in California is now official, and has been picked up by the WSJ's economics blog as well as by Daniel Walsch of the Mason Gazette. There's little here which will come as news to Market Movers' readers, but there are two new pieces of information.

Firstly, Chapman says that a fifth "team member" will join Smith, Porter, Wilson, and Rassenti at Chapman. My guess is that they're referring to Mark Olson, who is not (yet) officially leaving GMU.

Secondly, there's a bit more detail on Smith's motivation. Here's the WSJ:

Aside from sunnier weather, Chapman offered Dr. Smith and his colleagues a chance to have a direct impact on policy in California, along with a brand-new purpose-built laboratory in a prime campus location and an annual budget of as much as $4 million, said university President James Doti, who also serves as an economic advisor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“If you’re going to select a state to use as a laboratory, you might as well choose the biggest,” said Dr. Doti.
Dr. Smith didn’t respond to requests for comment. But his colleague, Prof. Wilson, said the opportunity to influence the design of markets in areas such as pollution rights, transportation and gasoline was definitely an attraction. “There’s certainly a lot of interesting questions that the state faces in terms of creating market mechanisms to solve problems, and that’s an area where we can make a contribution,” he said.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his team are very open to using market-based systems to implement policy decisions, and I can see why Smith and his team would jump at the chance to leave their ivory tower and actually build something big in the real world. Maybe the departure wasn't about GMU after all!