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Bart Wilson

economist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 26, 2025
Entity authorityQ4865127 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bart Wilson (born 1969) is an experimental economist. He holds the Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair of Economics and Law in the Chapman University, Argyros School of Business and Economics. He is also the director of the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy and teaches courses in humanomics. His work has been widely published in both the popular and academic press.

Career

Before coming to Chapman University, Wilson worked at George Mason University. Prior to his academic career, Wilson worked as an economist in the Division of Economic Policy Analysis at the Federal Trade Commission. He is also a guest lecturer at the Institute for Humane Studies.

Views

Wilson argues that economists often force "ordinary human behavior to fit their models." For Wilson, this can confuse objective economic analysis.

After research and experimentation Wilson and Vernon L. Smith conclude that "a history of unenforced property rights hinders our subjects' ability to develop the requisite personal social arrangements to support specialization and effectively exploit impersonal long-distance trade."

Wilson argues that capacity constrained firms have a vested interest in not lowering their prices for new competitive markets.

Education

B.S. University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire

Ph.D. University of Arizona

Awards

In 2017, Wilson was awarded with the Allais Memorial Prize in Behavioral Sciences during the Prague Conference on Behavioral Sciences.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Bart Wilson” as economist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bart, Wilson and economist.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969, 2017—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1969-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Bart, Wilson and economist providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Bart Wilson”, the useful work is to connect “economist” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4865127. VIAF identifies the subject as 199124898. The Library of Congress control number is no00009480. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969 and 2017.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bart Wilson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.