Call for papers

Experience and experiments in economics

Gide conference - Nancy september 27-29, 2018

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Abstracts (1000 words max) or entire session proposals (2000 words max) should be submitted before April 15th (extended deadline: May 4th) on the internet site of the conference http://gide2018.sciencesconf.org. The final drafts and texts should be downloaded on the internet site before August 31th.

Oeconomia History, Methodology, Philosophy will publish a special issue of some articles presented during the conference after a peer to peer review process.

Registration from August 15 to September 20, 2018

Call for papers

Experimental economics is nowadays an important field in economics and the words « experiences », « experiments », « experimental » are used by economists to describe their own "scientific" and research practices. The 2018 bi-annual conference of the Association Charles Gide is dedicated to this topic: historical and methodological perspectives are useful to better understand the meaning of these words in economics and to characterize the permanence and changes, the continuities and the discontinuities of experimental methodologies in political economy and economics through the history.

A shared view on experiments in economics is to consider experimental methodology is born in the 1940’ and the 1950’s : Chamberlin experiments at Harvard on industrial organization and imperfect competition, Allais experiment on rationality and decision theory, Tucker and Kuhn experiments on Nash equilibrium, prisonner’s dilemma and game theory. Three famous experiments which make it possible to consider that, contrary to the orthodox view (« we cannot perform the controlled experiments of the chemist or biologist. Like the astronomer we must be content largely to observe » said Samuleson in Economics, 1948, Wallis et Friedman, 1942), experimental methodology is useful for economics. These methods were then syztematized in the sixties and the seventies (V. Smith, D. Kahneman or A. Roth) : fields experiments, lab experiments, randomized experiments have no difficulty anymore in finding its plane in the economists tool-box and other types of experiments like agent-bases models and simulations are more and more used.

While this first view is certainly true in some cases, this is not the complete picture. The relationships between political economy and experience and/or experiments is an old issue. In the XVIIIth century, R. Cantillon (1755) in his Essai (1755), discusses many items and underlines some of the main lessons learned by the ordinary and common experience, A. Smith in the Wealth of Nations uses the word « experience » to make clear and to justify some of his jugments. Likewise, it is well known that experience plays a major role in knowledge for Condillac who proposes a lot of thought experiments.

The XIXth century is an important step regarding the experimental sciences.  A. Cournot or J.-S. Mill discuss the topic. For the former,  « l’économie politique est l’hygiène et la pathologie du corps social : elle reconnaît pour guide l’expérience ou plutôt l’observation ; la sagacité d’un esprit supérieur peut même devancer les résultats de l’expérience » (Cournot, Recherches sur les principes mathématiques de la théorie des richesses, 1838, Chapter 1, §5). For the latter, « there is a property common to almost all the moral sciences, and by which they are distinguished from most of the physical: this is,that it is seldom in our power to make experiments in them » (J. S. Mill, On the Definition of Political Economy (And on the Method of Investigation Proper to it), 1836). Even though, this idea has been shared in economics and may be found in Samuelson Economics one century later, experience(s) and experiments role is discussed during the XIXth century, sometimes very differently : L. Walras and W. Pareto do not agree on experiments while F. Galton tries to empirically tests the wisdom of the crowd (« Vox Populi », 1907). Steps by steps, economists consider experimental metodology. At the beginning of the XXth century, explicit experimental views are growing at Harvard or at Berkeley for example. The presidential address from Mitchell to the American Economic Association in 1924 indicates a willingness to develop experiments in economics.

The Gide conference is dedicated to study experience and experiments in economics from multiple points of views. No specific authors or school of thoughts are expected and all contributions about experience and experiments are welcome. Contributions which allow to better understand the polysemy of the word (experience as a source of knowledge, as a set of knowledge, the epistemic role of the thought experience…) or to consider the way experiences are used (proof, rhetorics, politics, education) are welcome. Contributions on specific experiments and the role they play in the history, in the evolution of the economic analysis as well as in the evolution of the economic representations  (for example, the Law’s system, the utopian experiences in the XIXth century) will be obviously considered. Last, contributions which capture the originality of experiments in economics compared to others sciences (either natural sciences – biology, physics – or social sciences - psychology, sociology, philosophy) are welcome.

Others sessions on different topics in history and methodology in economics will be also organized.