Economics, Experimental

Experimental economics applies laboratory methods of inquiry to the study of motivated human behavior in social contexts governed by explicit or implicit rules. Explicit rules may be defined by experimental control and information, or the rules may be shaped by market institutions in which cash-motivated people buy or sell abstract rights to consume or produce commodities and services within some particular technological context. Implicit rules refer to the norms, traditions, and habits that people bring to the laboratory as part of their cultural and biological evolutionary heritage; they are not normally controlled by the experimenter. By devising and running markets and other exchange systems in the laboratory, and through the use of actual people, experimental economics helps us better understand why markets and social exchange ...