Vernon L. Smith is the George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Economics and Finance at Chapman University, California. He was awarded the Noble Prize in Economic sciences in 2002 for, 'having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms'. He is a founding member of Chapman University's Economic Science Institute and Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, and is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.