The Experiment in the History of Economics
本书收录了1999年会议论文，探讨经济学实验的历史，涵盖早期实验游戏、阿莱悖论起源、实验经济学为何到1980年代才流行，以及哈耶克与摩根斯坦对实验的不同态度。
This slim volume contains a remarkably diverse collection of essays on experiments in economics, the fruit of a conference in 1999. They illustrate not only different facets of the history of experiments in economics, but also diverse ways of writing history. The opening essay, by Robert W. Dimand, is a survey of the early literature on experimental economic games. It is remarkable how extensive such work was, given the prevalent belief that economics could not be experimental. Edward Chamberlin prepared the way, using games in the classroom, but though he influenced Vernon Smith, others turned to experimental games independently. It is a story of interdisciplinary work, spanning biology, psychology and economics. The broad scope of Dimand’s essay contrasts with the detailed investigation of the origins of the Allais paradox by Sophie Jallais and Pierre‐Charles Pradier. It is common knowledge that this originated at a conference in 1952 where Maurice Allais managed to induce Leonard Savage to make choices inconsistent with his theory of expected utility maximisation. Less well known is the fact that most of the other economists on whom Allais tried out his questions made choices that were consistent with the theory. This chapter documents the effect of the paradox on the development of expected utility theory, concluding that its only effect was on Savage’s interpretation of the theory, moving from seeing it as a positive theory to seeing it as a normative one. S. Abu Turab Rizvi then asks why experimental economics did not become popular till the 1980s. He finds the answer in the demise of the general equilibrium programme. When confidence in general equilibrium theory was undermined by the Sonnenschein‐Mantel‐Debreu results, there was a period of greater methodological pluralism and economists began to take experiments more seriously. After Rizvi’s interpretive essay, Alessandro Innocenti and Carlo Zappia offer an interesting case study comparing the attitudes of Friedrich Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern to experiments. Both started as Austrians, committed to deductive theorising, but in the 1950s their paths diverged: Hayek continued in the Austrian tradition but Morgenstern came to see experimental work as the outgrowth of game theory. Belief that experiments could play an important role in economics was consistent with his scepticism about much economic data.