Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T06:02:15.492Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

THE ROLE OF EXPERIMENTS IN ECONOMICS: REPLY TO JONES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2014

Francesco Guala*
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Milano, [email protected]

Abstract

Martin Jones has criticized my account of the methodology of experimental economics on three points: the impossibility of testing external validity claims in the laboratory, my reconstruction of external validity inferences as analogical arguments, and the distinction between laboratory and non-laboratory sciences. I defend my account here and try to eliminate some misunderstandings that may have prompted Jones’s criticism.

Type
Replies
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bardsley, N., Cubitt, R., Loomes, G., Moffatt, P., Starmer, C. and Sugden, R.. 2010. Experimental Economics: Rethinking the Rules. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, N. 1999. The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, N. 2011. Evidence, external validity and explanatory relevance. In Philosophy of Science Matters: The Philosophy of Peter Achinstein, ed. Morgan, G., 1528. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chu, Y. P. and Chu, R. L.. 1990. The subsidence of preference reversals in simplified and marketlike experimental settings: a note. American Economic Review 80: 902911.Google Scholar
Guala, F. 2005. The Methodology of Experimental Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guala, F. 2008. The experimental philosophy of experimental economics: replies to Alexandrova, Hargreaves-Heap, Hausman, and Hindriks. Journal of Economic Methodology 15: 224231.Google Scholar
Guala, F. 2010. Extrapolation, analogy, and comparative process tracing. Philosophy of Science 77: 10701082.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guala, F. 2012. Reciprocity: weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35: 115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hacking, I. 1992. The self-vindication of the laboratory sciences. In Science as Practice and Culture, ed. Pickering, A.. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jimenez-Buedo, M. 2011. Conceptual tools for assessing experiments: some well-entrenched confusions regarding the internal/external validity distinction. Journal of Economic Methodology 18: 271282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, M. K. 2011. External validity and libraries of phenomena: a critique of Francesco Guala's methodology of experimental economics. Economics and Philosophy 27: 247271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, S. and List, J. A.. 2007. What do laboratory experiments measuring social preferences reveal about the real world? Journal of Economic Perspectives 21: 153174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayo, D. 2005. Evidence as passing a severe test; highly probable versus highly probed hypotheses. In Scientific Evidence: Philosophical Theories and Applications, ed. Achinstein, P., 95127. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Schram, A. 2005. Artificiality: the tension between internal and external validity in economic experiments. Journal of Economic Methodology 12: 225237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Starmer, C. 1999. Experiments in economics … (Should we trust the dismal scientists in white coats?). Journal of Economic Methodology 6: 130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steel, D. 2008. Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation and Causality in the Biological and Social Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Steel, D. 2010. A new approach to argument by analogy: extrapolation and chain graphs. Philosophy of Science 77: 10581069.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, J. A. 2009. The multiplicity of experimental protocols: a challenge to reductionist and non-reductionist models of the unity of neuroscience. Synthese 167: 511539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, M. 2005. Philosophy of Experimental Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar