Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-45ctf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-28T05:32:28.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is formalism the key to resolving the generalizability crisis? An experimental economics perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2022

Zacharias Maniadis Open the ORCID record for Zacharias Maniadis [Opens in a new window]
Zacharias Maniadis*
Affiliation:
Economics Department and Center for Economic Policy Research, University of Cyprus, CY-1678 Nicosia, Cyprus and Department of Economics, School of Social Sciences, School of University of Southampton Highfield Campus, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. z.maniadis@soton.ac.uk; https://sites.google.com/site/zachariasmaniadiswebpage/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I draw lessons from experimental economics. I argue that the lack of mathematical formalism cannot be usefully thought as the cause of the underappreciation of contextual and generalizability considerations. Instead, this lack is problematic because it hinders a clear relationship between theory and quantitative predictions. I also advocate a pragmatic policy-focused approach as a partial remedy to the generalizability problem.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 45 , 2022 , e27
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Al-Ubaydli, O., List, J. A., & Suskind, D. L. (2017). What can we learn from experiments? Understanding the threats to the scalability of experimental results. American Economic Review, 107(5), 282–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C. (2011). The promise and success of lab-field generalizability in experimental economics: A critical reply to Levitt and List. Available at SSRN 1977749.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C. F., Dreber, A., Forsell, E., Ho, T. H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., … Wu, H. (2016). Evaluating replicability of laboratory experiments in economics. Science, 351(6280), 1433–1436.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duflo, E. (2017). Richard T. Ely lecture: The economist as plumber. American Economic Review, 107(5), 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Exadaktylos, F., Espín, A. M., & Branas-Garza, P. (2013). Experimental subjects are not different. Scientific Reports, 3(1), 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galizzi, M. M., & Navarro-Martinez, D. (2019). On the external validity of social preference games: A systematic lab-field study. Management Science, 65(3), 976–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertwig, R., & Ortmann, A. (2001). Experimental practices in economics: A methodological challenge for psychologists?. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(3), 383–403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ioannidis, J. P. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Medicine, 2(8), e124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kessler, J., & Vesterlund, L. (2015). The external validity of laboratory experiments: The misleading emphasis on quantitative effects (Vol. 18, pp. 392–405). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2007). What do laboratory experiments measuring social preferences reveal about the real world?. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(2), 153–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, J. A. (2020). Non est disputandum de generalizability? A glimpse into the external validity trial (No. w27535). National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loewenstein, G. (1999). Experimental economics from the vantage-point of behavioural economics. The Economic Journal, 109(453), F25–F34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maniadis, Z., Tufano, F., & List, J. A. (2014). One swallow doesn't make a summer: New evidence on anchoring effects. American Economic Review, 104(1), 277–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muthukrishna, M., & Henrich, J. (2019). A problem in theory. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(3), 221–229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ortmann, A. (2020). On the foundations of behavioural and experimental economics. Available at SSRN.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plott, C. R. (1982). Industrial organization theory and experimental economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 20(4), 1485–1527.Google Scholar
Roth, A. E. (2002). The economist as engineer: Game theory, experimentation, and computation as tools for design economics. Econometrica, 70(4), 1341–1378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roth, A. E. (2018). Marketplaces, markets, and market design. American Economic Review, 108(7), 1609–1658.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schram, A. (2005). Artificiality: The tension between internal and external validity in economic experiments. Journal of Economic Methodology, 12(2), 225–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, V. L. (1976). Experimental economics: Induced value theory. The American Economic Review, 66(2), 274–279.Google Scholar
Zizzo, D. J. (2013). Claims and confounds in economic experiments. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 93, 186–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar