A new virtual issue of The Economic Journal, ‘Lab Experiments’ is out now and can be read online for free for a limited time.
Laboratory experiments remain one of the discipline’s most powerful tools for uncovering how economic behaviour responds to structure. Their strength lies not in abstraction, but in engineering: in the ability to vary incentives, information, and institutional rules with maximal control. This controlled flexibility allows economists to identify mechanisms that are otherwise difficult to isolate — from the emotional forces that shape deviant acts to the strategic considerations that govern markets, cooperation, and exchange.
With an introduction by Editor Steffen Huck, this issue showcases 10 papers previously published in the Journal which illustrate the breadth of insights that emerge when behaviour is studied under clean, well-defined conditions.
The papers are divided into two groups and examine:
- Giving, Deviancy & Emotions: tracing how fairness concerns, aversion to exploitation, moral boundaries, and even thermal stress influence decisions; and
- Consumers, Firms & Institutions: showing how preferences, expectations, and strategic incentives operate in settings ranging from public goods to credence markets, merger environments, and tests of consumer theory.
Jointly, the studies demonstrate how laboratory experiments make it possible to adjust key elements of economic interactions in a disciplined way and trace the resulting behavioural responses with utmost precision. They also reflect the Journal’s long-standing and continuing commitment to experimental research.
Read the new virtual issue for free here.