Conference on the Methodology of Experimental Economics

The Center for Experimental Social Science (CESS) at New York University has launched a series of conferences and conference volumes exploring methodological issues in economics. The first conference, held in 2007, addressed fundamental epistemological questions about the empirical coverage and logical status of economic theory. Andrew Schotter and Guillaume Frechette of New York University now plan three more conferences in this series on economic methodology—one on experimental economics, one on survey methods in economics, and one on neuroeconomics.

This award from Russell Sage Foundation will provide partial support for the upcoming conference, “The Methodology of Experimental Economics.” The conference will investigate questions of experimental methodology, eschewing the small questions of everyday laboratory methods. The conference will be divided into four sessions. In the first session, Charles Plott and Alvin Roth will discuss their papers describing whether experimental economics has lived up to its promise, and investigating the “big surprises” in the field that have risen since its inception. The second session will include papers by David Levine, Muriel Niederle, Shachar Kariv, Andrew Schotter, Charles Holt, Thomas Palfrey, Andrew Caplin, and Mark Dean, who will each detail their perspectives on the relationship between economic theory and economic experiments. In the final session, John List, Glenn Harrison, Guillaume Frechette, Colin Camerer, and John Kagel will investigate the relative merits of laboratory and field experiments. Support for this conference is in keeping with the foundation’s long-standing goals of advancing the interdisciplinary analysis of economic behavior and strengthening the methodological underpinnings of social science.