Zak Griffith [ Edit ] [ Clear Cookies ]
Projects
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Nelson Farms & Trucking

In early 2008 my girlfriend's family farm was having a party to celebrate it's 100th year. They needed a website to help spread the word and allow for all those who would be attending to RSVP and share their stories about the farm.

I then developed NelsonFarms&Trucking.com.
The site included a guest book, picture gallery, section for those attending to post stories, an admin section for the family to post pictures, and some information about the celebration. I developed the site using HTML, PHP, CSS, javascript and a MySql database.

Since the party, I have taken the site down since it was no longer needed by the family.



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Home Brewing

My roommates and I started home brewing in early 2008 and have since made quite a few batches of varies types of beer...

Check out my homebrews from 2011.

I am also currently developing a website along with a MySQL database so we can accurately record and organize all our beer recipes and have a place to discuss future recipes and past successes/mistakes.

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Music Recording, Editing & Mixing

In college, I purchased a PreSonus Firebox and ever since then I have been recording, editing, and mixing my own music. I have played guitar and drums since high-school, so this has been a way to continue playing and make some riffs that have been useful in other projects.

Here is an example of some of my music. This is a video of a concept truck built using the Samson CNC Plasma Cutter.

Here is the same video on the Samson CNC Website.

I also did the music for some of the promotional videos in the Keystone Classic Golf Tournament section below.




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Video Recording & Editing

My brother and I have created a handful of videos back in our college days including a short about the Laramie Naughty Pines roller derby team that we submitted to the Wyoming Short Film Contest.

Watch the video

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Keystone Classic Golf Tournament

In 2006 my brother and I hosted the Keystone Classic, a golf tournament in Guernsey, WY. The tournament was a two man scramble consisting of 18 holes with each participant drinking a beer each hole.

Overall the tournament was a success. We had 16 players, all of whom enjoyed golfing, drinking, a BBQ, and a post round concert with three local bands.

We also put together some videos and music to help promote the tournament.

Check it out.

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Fusion Stone Manager

I developed a little Java application that helped me keep track of these things called Random Fusion Stones in a game I used to play. Each stone had three random attributes attached to it, and they were only helpful if I had sets of three identical Fusion Stones. The program allows me to input my stones and saves them all in a file. The program will then parse through the file and find like stones and report the results. It also lets me search for a specific stone or delete stones that I don't have any more.

I also exported the program as an executable Jar file so I could easily pass it along to others who needed it.

If you want to see it run, or take a look at the code:
Executable Jar
Source Code

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Work
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I am currently writing experimental economics programs in Java for the AG/ECON department at the University of Wyoming.   The programs are designed to simulate real world markets to gather data that can help predict how the market will react when different government payment schemes are applied.

To gather the data, we bring in groups of students to participate in a market as buyers and sellers.   During the auction the program will be recording all the market activity which is later analyzed and used for journal articles and papers.

The following is a list of the current and completed auction games I have written.


Current
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Private Negotiations - Extra Period Variant

This is basically Private Negotiations but with each period split into two 'Bargaining Periods'. The first bargaining period will allow for only a certain number of players to be matched during bargaining. The second bargaining period is the same as in the basic Private Negotiations.


More Info...

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Completed
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Private Negotiations

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Private Negotiations - Buyer Production Variant

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English Auction

This program simulates an English Auction in which sellers produce a number of items, then those items are auctioned off, one at a time, to the buyers.

The auction was run using 8 students at a time. Half of the students would be sellers while the other half were buyers. There were also a few experiments conducted with only 4 students, all of them buyers, bidding against each other for a set amount of units.

More Info...

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Duopoly

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The following is a list of published works that were written using data gathered from the auction programs that I developed.


Refereed Journal Articles/Papers:

Phillips, O.R., D.J. Menkhaus, A.M. Nagler, and C.T Bastian, 2009, “Experimental Work on Subsidies, Moral Hazard, and Market Power in Agricultural Markets,” Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming.

Phillips, O.R, and D.J. Menkhaus, 2009, “Maintaining Tacit Collusion in Repeated Ascending Auctions,“ Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 52, pp. 91-109.

Menkhaus, D.J., O.R. Phillips, and A.V. Yakunina, 2009, “Inventories and Public Information in Private Negotiations: A Laboratory Market Study,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 91, No. 2, pp. 503-517.

Nagler, A., D.J. Menkhaus, C.T. Bastian, N.S. Ballenger, Erik O'Donoghue, and C. Edwin Young, 2009, “Are Production Decisions Decoupled Under a Bond Scheme? Experimental Evidence,” Review of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 222-230.

Menkhaus, D.J., C.T. Bastian, and M.D. Ehmke, 2008, “The Evolving Agricultural Marketplace: Selected Results and Implications for the West from the Laboratory,” Western Economics Forum, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 44-51.

Bastian, C.T., D.J. Menkhaus, A.M. Nagler, and N.S. Ballenger, 2008, “Ex Ante Evaluation of Alternative Agricultural Policies in Laboratory Posted-Bid Markets,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 90, No. 5, pp. 1208-1215.

Menkhaus, D.J., O.R. Phillips, C.T. Bastian, and Gittings, L.B., 2007, “The Matching Problem (and Inventories) in Private Negotiation,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 89, No. 4, pp. 1073-1084.

Other Journal Articles/Papers:

Nagler, A., D.J. Menkhaus, C.T. Bastian, and M. Ehmke, Spring 2009, “Ex Ante Evaluation of Incidence of Payments in an Experimental Land Rental Market,” Working Paper, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY.

Nagler, A., C.T. Bastian, and D.J. Menkhaus, 2008, “Experimental Economics Lab Puts Adam Smith's Invisible Hand Under the Microscope,” Reflections, June, pp. 9-12 (Second Ranked Article).

Nagler, A., D.J. Menkhaus, C.T. Bastian, and N.S. Ballenger, Summer 2007, “Ex Ante Evaluation of Production Decisions Under Traditional and New Generation Agricultural Policy Options Within and Experimental Sellers-Only Institution,” Working Paper, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY.

Presented/Invited Papers, Posters and Lectures:

Menkhaus, D.J., C.T. Bastian, A.M. Nagler, and N.S. Ballenger, “Evaluation of Production Under Decoupled Policy Options: An Experimental Economics Approach,” Selected Paper, Western Agricultural Economics Meeting, Kauai, HI, June 2009.

Phillips, O.R., J.N. Thurow, and D.J. Menkhaus, “The Maverick Firm in Experimental Duopoly Markets,” Paper Presented, Workshop in Industrial Organization: Theory, Empirics, and Experiments at the University of Salento, Leece, Italy, June 2009. Also Presented at the American Law and Economics Association Meeting in San Diego, CA, May 16, 2009.

Bastian, C.T., D.J. Menkhaus, A.M. Nagler, and N.S. Ballenger, 2008, “Ex Ante Evaluation of Alternative Agricultural Policies in Laboratory Posted-Bid Markets,” Principal Paper Presentation, American Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, July 27-29, 2008.

Phillips, O.R., A.M. Nagler, D.J. Menkhaus, and C.T. Bastian, “Experimental Work on Subsidies: Moral Hazard and Collusion in Agricultural Markets,” Paper Presented, Economic Science Association Meeting, Tuscon, AZ, October 2007.

Menkhaus, D.J., and C.T. Bastian, “Demonstration of Experimental Economics in a Market Setting,” Invited Presentation, USDA, ERS, Washington, DC, May 2007.

Menkhaus, D.J., C.T. Bastian, A.M. Nagler, and N.S. Ballenger, “Ex Ante Evaluation of Alternative Policies in Experimental Markets,” Invited Presentation, USDA, ERS, Washington, DC, May 2007.



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