The Role of Experiments in the Social Sciences: The Case of Economics

Abstract

This chapter discusses the role of experiments in the social sciences with focus on economics. Among the central topics in the methodology of the social sciences is the analysis of the role of experiments. It receives special attention in the case of economics, where there is a branch explicitly called “experimental economics.” However, the acceptance of “experiments” in the social sciences, in general, and in economics, in particular, has not been always the case, and it is still an issue that raises objections. Controlled observations have been commonly accepted as a valid procedure to test and evaluate scientific statements in the social sciences, whereas for a long time a wary attitude has dominated the scene regarding the role of experiments in the social sciences. Scientific research on social events has widened the original fields in the past decades, mainly in the sciences of psychology and economics. Some new territories have been embraced, such as “experimental economics,” which in 2002 received public recognition in the form of a Nobel Prize. Experimental economics is a branch of the social science that underwent the transformation from “a seldom encountered curiosity to a well-established part of economic literature,” from 1975 to 1985.