*Apologies for cross-posting*

Dear all, 

This week Andrej Svorenčík will show us how the experiment became part of economics in the late 1980s. He argues that the development was driven by the re-enactment of economic theory in controlled settings. Hence, the theoretical discipline was forced to to take the experimental approach on board.

The seminar takes place on Wednesday, 10 June, in room 32L.LG.03, from 1-2:30pm. Please note the room change! Access to 32L is regulated. If you’re not an LSE member, tell building security that you’re attending HPPE and they will let you pass. 

About Andrej: Andrej is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim, in the Economics Department.

Best wishes, 

Tobias

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Abstract:      
The emergence of experimental economics in the last third of the 20th century revisited the long-standing belief that economics is a non-experimental discipline. The history of this new practice reveals this went further than simply introducing the experimental method to economics. Its history shows individual economists and research communities above all redefining the relationship between economic theory and rigorous data. Replicable data that were specifically created to satisfy conditions set by theory in controlled environments could not be avoided by economists or explained away as irrelevant to economic theory. The reconceptualization of the relationship between economic theory and rigorous experimental data culminated at the end of the 1980s in what I call the experimental turn, after which the experimental method became accepted in the wider economics community.