Some Methodological Issues in Experimental Economics

The growing acceptance and success of experimental economics has increased the interest of researchers in tackling philosophical and methodological challenges to which their work increasingly gives rise. I sketch some general issues that call for the combined expertise of experimental economists and philosophers of science, of experiment, and of inductive-statistical inference and modeling. 1. Introduction. The goal of the symposium out of which our group of papers emerged is to introduce, within a Philosophy of Science Association forum, some of the philosophical and methodological issues relating to current work in experimental economics, which I abbreviate throughout as expereconomics. As our proposal for this symposium remarks: " Experimental economics is an interesting arena because its methodological conventions are still relatively fluid, and thus there seems to be a genuine opportunity for philosophers of science to contribute to the debate and ultimately [hopefully] improve the methodological practice in the field. Conversely, experimental economists seem to have come across meth-odological problems that call for more attention on philosophers' part. To sum up, we see the exchange between experimenters and philosophers very much as a two-way street. " My aim will be to survey some broad philosophical and methodological questions that may help in developing a road map for this two-way street.