Learning through Shared Mental Models: Experiential Learning, and Transaction Costs in a Research Institute

Abstract

In this Report on Practice, we explore both the process and an approach of engaging Undergraduate Students in research using a Research Institute setting. Drawing from our experience we conceive of the learning process as a series of interactions and transactions that face the same impediments as any transaction or interaction The approach, we report on is one rooted in the reduction of the transaction costs that exist in the process of learning for students and for faculty. We develop both our understanding of this reality and report our approach and the programs we developed to engage students in economic research focused on public policy questions.