Experimental Economics

Abstract

Experimental economics has become an established method for generating controlled and replicable empirical information that is complementary to other empirical methods in the social sciences. There is a strong research infrastructure for laboratory experimentation in Europe and also in Germany. A valuable instrument in the development of this methodology would be the creation of a short socio-economic survey integrating questions already used in existing surveys, which experimental economists could then administer to their participants. This would make it relatively easy to analyze the selectivity of subject pools. However, among experimental economists there is as yet no existing standard questionnaire for collecting this information, which limits the ability to compare respective datasets. The effort shall be made, therefore, to create such a common questionnaire. Furthermore, there is at present no across-the-board standard for data reporting in this area. There is one data repository in the United States that currently does collect experimental data and makes them freely available. Building up a data archive that integrates (merges) existing data, however, is a very laborious undertaking and requires substantial scientific input from interested researchers.