Experimental Methods in Economics (i)

Abstract

Experiment in the scientific sense has been well described as ‘putting in action causes and agents over which we have control, and purposely varying their combinations and noticing what effects take place’ (Herschel, Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 76). In sciences such as physics and chemistry, in which the phenomena are amenable to arrangement, it is by far the most potent instrument of discovery. Where, however, there is not the same facility for easy manipulation, the inquirer is compelled to fall back on the less effective method of simple observation. Instead of creating instances for himself, he has to find them in nature, or wait till they are presented spontaneously to his view.

This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1st edition, 1987. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman