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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Tom Lane
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Traditionally, economists often argued experiments play little or no useful role in our science. This paper employs a novel approach to track the historical evolution of this doctrine from 1970 to 2019, by constructing a dataset of 278 introductory economics textbooks. Quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that anti-experimental views were dominant and largely unchanged until 2000, but there has since been a trend towards textbooks making positive statements about experimentation. However, remarks that economic experiments are impossible have been (almost) eliminated only in the last decade, evidencing a sluggish change in perceptions. Supplementary interviews with key textbook authors confirm the historical trend of increased enthusiasm towards experiments, and suggest they are now accepted within the economic mainstream. Our findings hold important implications for how the empirical methodology of economics is understood by practitioners and students.
Author(s): Gunessee S, Lane T
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
Year: 2023
Volume: 107
Print publication date: 01/12/2023
Online publication date: 01/09/2023
Acceptance date: 26/08/2023
Date deposited: 04/10/2023
ISSN (print): 2214-8043
ISSN (electronic): 2214-8051
Publisher: Elsevier BV
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2023.102086
DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2023.102086
Data Access Statement: We will make the data freely available to download as a supplementary material via the journal’s website.
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