Abstract
Experimental methods have long been thought of as irrelevant and useless to economic research. To the best of our knowledge, this idea was explicitly stated for the first time by John Stuart Mill in the middle of the nineteenth century.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Smith’s first supply and demand experiment was done in January 1956 (Smith 1989).
- 3.
- 4.
According to Heukelom (2014), it was in the US in the early 20twentieth century that the word “behavior” began to be used for comprehensive activities not only of human beings but also of animals.
- 5.
Smith seems to be somewhat critical against behavioural economists’ search for anomalies “in the tails of distributions.” See Smith (2008, p. 22, ff. 6).
- 6.
Here the term “intentionality” should be taken as a philosophical terminology referring to the characteristic of some mental states that they are always “about” something, and intentional states are mental states with such a property. Intentional states include such mental states as perceiving, believing, wanting, hoping and so on.
- 7.
However, this way of understanding human behaviour has been philosophically sophisticated by some philosophers and social scientists including Max Weber. In their discourse, an action is distinguished from a sheer behaviour such as yawning, because it is based on intentional states and thus regarded as rational choice of an agent. Weber (1978) restricted the object of sociology to the study of actions with rational motives, because we can only understand actions with rationality. Of course, Weber’s sociology includes the discipline of economics in our modern parlance.
- 8.
This assertion may not be immediately applicable when we consider designing the actual economic environment by simulating the environment in laboratory experiments.
References
Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions. New York: HarperCollins.
Camerer, C. (2003). Behavioral game theory: Experiments in strategic interaction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Chamberlin, E. H. (1948). An experimental imperfect market. The Journal of Political Economy, 56, 95–108.
Davidson, D. (1980). Essays on actions and events. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Fisher, R. (1935/1971). The design of experiments (9th ed.). London: Macmillan.
Flood, M. (1958). Some experimental games. Management Science, 5, 5–26.
Friedman, M. (1953). The methodology of positive economics. In Essays in positive economics (pp. 3–43). Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Guala, F. (2005). The methodology of experimental economics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gul, F., & Pesendorfer, W. (2008). The case for mindless economics. In A. Caplin & Andrew Schotter (Eds.), The foundations of positive and normative economics (pp. 3–41). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heukelom, F. (2014). Behavioral economics: a history. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Holland, P. (1986). Statistics and causal inference. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 81, 945–960.
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J., & Thaler, R. (1990). Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem. Journal of Political Economy, 98, 1325–1348.
Kahnemann, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–291.
List, J. (2006). Field experiments: A bridge between lab and naturally occurring data. Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy, 6, Article 8.
Mill, J. S. (2007/1836). On the definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of ‘Investigation Proper to It. In Collected works of John Stuart Mill (Vol. 4). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Robbins, L. (1932). An essay on the nature and significance of economic science. London, UK: McMillan & Co.
Roth, A. (1986). Laboratory experimentation in economics. Economics and Philosophy, 2, 245–273.
Roth, A. (1993). The early history of experimental economics. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 15, 184–209.
Rubin, D. B. (1974). Estimating causal effects of treatments in randomized and nonrandomized studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 66, 688–701.
Samuelson, P., & Nordhaus, W. (1985). Economics. New York: McGrow-Hill.
Schotter, A. (2008). What’s so informative about choice? In A. Caplin & A. Schotter (Eds.), The foundations of positive and normative economics: A handbook (pp. 70–94). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Siegel, S. (1953). Certain determinants and correlates of authoritarianism. Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
Smith, V. (1976). Experimental economics: Induced value theory. In The American Economic Review, Paper and Proceedings of the Eighty-eighth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (Vol. 66, pp. 274–279).
Smith, V. (1982). Microeconomic systems as an experimental science. The American Economic Review, 72, 923–955.
Smith, V. (1989). Theory, experiment and economics. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3, 151–169.
Smith, V. (2008). Rationality in economics: Constructivist and ecological forms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Svorenčik, A., & Maas, H. (2016). The making of experimental economics: Witness seminar on the emergence of a field. Cham: Springer.
von Wright, G. (2004). Explanation and understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. In G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.), University of California Press. Berkeley: CA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kawagoe, T., Takizawa, H. (2019). Diversity of Experimental Methods in Economics: An Introduction. In: Kawagoe, T., Takizawa, H. (eds) Diversity of Experimental Methods in Economics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6065-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6065-7_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-6064-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-6065-7
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)