Microeconomic Systems as an Experimental Science

Abstract

Study nature, not books… Louis Agassiz After studying economics for six years I have reached the conclusion that there is no difference between discovery and creation… [Graffiti by an unknown student] The experimental literature contains only a few attempts to articulate a “theory” of laboratory experiments in economics (Charles Plott, 1979; Louis Wilde, 1980; my articles, 1976a, pp. 43–44, 46–47; 1976b; 1980). It is appropriate for this effort to have been modest, since it has been more important for experimentalists to present a rich variety of examples of their work than abstract explanations of why one might perform experiments. Wilde's contribution provides an integration and extension of the earlier papers, and brings a fresh perspective and coherence that invites further examination. This seems to be the time and place to attempt a more complete description of the methodology and function of experiments in microeconomics. The formal study of information systems in resource allocation theory (Leonid Hurwicz, 1960) and the laboratory experimental study of resource allocation under alternative forms of market organization (Sidney Siegel and Lawrence Fouraker, 1960, Fouraker and Siegel, 1963; my 1962, 1964 articles) had coincident beginnings and, in important respects, have undergone similar, if mostly independent, intellectual developments. The similarity of intellectual development in these two new endeavors is represented by the increasing focus upon the role of institutions in defining the information and incentive structure within which economic outcomes are determined.