The Making of Experimental Economics : Witness Seminar on the Emergence of a Field

This book is the transcript of a witness seminar on the history of experimental economics, in which eleven high-profile experimental economists participated, including Nobel Laureates Vernon Smith, Reinhard Selten and Alvin Roth. The witness seminar was constructed along four different topics: skills, community, laboratory, and funding. The transcript is preceded by an introduction explaining the method of the witness seminar and its specific set-up and resuming its results. The participants' contribution and their lively discussion provide a wealth of insights into the emergence of experimental economics as a field of research. This book was awarded the ‘Outstanding Research Publication award’ for 2012 by the American Educational Research Association’s Division I: ‘Education in the Professions’. < Contents 6 Chapter 1: A Witness Seminar on the Emergency of Experimental Economics 9 Introduction 9 The Method of the Witness Seminar 10 Background to the Witness Seminar on the Experiment in Economics 13 Preparation of the Seminar 15 Whom to Invite and Why? 15 What Topics to Cover and Why? 17 How to Prepare for and Organize the Seminar 18 The Seminar and Its Results 20 The Transcript 23 How to Read the Transcript of the Witness Seminar 24 References 25 Chapter 2: The Very Beginnings 27 Choosing a Dissertation Topic 27 Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries 30 Early Meetings and Seminars 35 Chance Encounters and Conversions 36 The JEL-Code and Closeted Experimentalists on the Job Market 45 Institutional Settings 49 Chapter 3: The Growth of a Community 55 The German Experimental Community 55 Caltech, Public Choice, and the ``Experimental Bug ́ ́ 58 The Tucson Meetings, the NSF, and Dan Newlon 60 Bringing Experiments to a Larger Audience 63 Struggle for Acceptance or Standard Battles with Referees? 66 Educating Editors 68 Amsterdam: Bridging Experimental Cultures 71 Internationalization and the Need for a Journal 73 A Separate Journal: A Ghetto or a Premium Site to Publish? 76 Lowering the Barrier to Entry: Editors and Handbooks 79 Dissents on Method 81 What Constitutes an Observation? Part I 84 Payment and Deception: Spoiling the Subject Pool or Spilling the Beans? 85 What Constitutes an Observation? Part II 88 Signs of Success: And the Resources It Takes 90 Chapter 4: Funding 94 Payment: Tightening Up the Structure of the Model 94 Paying the Subjects: Tax Money Spent on Frivolous Things 98 How to Fund an Economics Lab? 104 Contract Money: The Best Kind of Money? 107 Contract Research: Putting Careers at Risk 111 Continuities Between the Lab and the World 113 The (Missing) Boilerplate in Contracts 115 The Experiment as Interface for Arguments 117 Chapter 5: Knowledge and Skills 119 Learning from Failures 120 Confused Subjects and the Logistics of an Experiment 124 Institutional Resistance to Experimental Results 127 Isolating Confounding Factors and Learning from Them 129 Costly Consequences of Actions: Who Will Pay for the Soufflés? 132 Anything You Change Can Make a Difference 135 How to Ask an Experimental Question? 140 Designing an Experiment Is aJoint Effort 142 Learning from Teaching 143 Thinking as an Experimenter 150 Transferable Skills from Other Fields 153 The Questions Depend on the Relevant Audience 156 Learning the Theory from Experiments 156 Discovering the Sub-game Perfect Equilibrium 160 Chapter 6: Laboratories 163 The PLATO System 163 Technology Changes the Message Space 166 Austin Hoggatt ́s Visionary Laboratory 168 A Laboratory Is More Than Its Physical Infrastructure 170 Space Fights: NASA Pays for Labspace 172 Portable Laboratories 174 The Management of Laboratories, Software, and Subject Pool 176 Lab Funding from an Administrator ́s Perspective 179 Loosing Control 180 Chapter 7: History and Future 183 How to Do Science and How to Name a Society? 183 SEEing Is Believing: Armchairs on Fire 184 An Anomaly Is Just Another Regularity 186 Relics of the Past: And of the Future 187 Chapter 8: Biographies of Participants 191 Chapter 9: Episodes from the Early History of Experimentation in Economics 201 Introduction 201 Episode One: The Wallis-Friedman (1942) Critique of the Thurstone (1931) Experiment 202 Context 202 Summary 202 The Methodological Questions This Museum Piece Highlights 204 Episode Two: Morgenstern (1954) on Experiment and Large-Scale Computation in Economics 204 Context 204 Summary 206 The Methodological Questions This Museum Piece Highlights 209 Episode Three: Thomas Juster (1970) on the Possibilities of Experimentation and the Quality of Data Input in the Social Scienc... 209 Context 209 Summary 210 The Methodological Questions This Museum Piece Highlights 212 Episode Four: Token Economy and Animal Models for the Experimental Analysis of Economic Behavior (Kagel and Battalio, 1980) 212 Context 212 Summary 213 The Methodological Questions This Museum Piece Highlights 215 Episode Five: Siegel ́s Work on Guessing Sequences 215 Context 215 Summary 217 The Methodological Questions This Museum Piece Highlights 219 Concluding Remarks 219 References 220 Endnotes 224 References 240 This book is the transcript of a witness seminar on the history of experimental economics, in which eleven high-profile experimental economists participated, including Nobel Laureates Vernon Smith, Reinhard Selten and Alvin Roth. The witness seminar was constructed along four different topics: skills, community, laboratory, and funding. The transcript is preceded by an introduction explaining the method of the witness seminar and its specific set-up and resuming its results. The participants' contribution and their lively discussion provide a wealth of insights into the emergence of experimental economics as a field of research. This book was awarded with best book prize of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) in 2018. Annotation This book is the transcript of a witness seminar on the history of experimental economics, in which eleven high-profile experimental economists participated, including Nobel Laureates Vernon Smith, Reinhard Selten and Alvin Roth. The witness seminar was constructed along four different topics: skills, community, laboratory, and funding. The transcript is preceded by an introduction explaining the method of the witness seminar and its specific set-up and resuming its results. The participants' contribution and their lively discussion provide a wealth of insights into the emergence of experimental economics as a field of research Front Matter....Pages i-vii A Witness Seminar on the Emergency of Experimental Economics....Pages 1-18 The Very Beginnings....Pages 19-46 The Growth of a Community....Pages 47-85 Funding....Pages 87-111 Knowledge and Skills....Pages 113-156 Laboratories....Pages 157-176 History and Future....Pages 177-184 Biographies of Participants....Pages 185-194 Episodes from the Early History of Experimentation in Economics....Pages 195-217 Back Matter....Pages 219-245