Subject Pools and Deception in Agricultural and Resource Economics Experiments

The use of student subjects and the role of deception in economic experiments are two controversial issues that have been widely discussed in the agricultural and resource economics (ARE) community recently. We provide a self-contained methodological discussion of these issues from the perspective of the larger experimental economics community. Our main points are that field professionals are most appropriate for policy-oriented and measurement questions, and student subjects are most effective at answering scientific research questions closely tied to economic theory. Active deception, where subjects are provided with explicitly misleading information, has been avoided in the mainstream economics discipline because it can lead to a loss of experimental control, lead to subject selection bias, and impose negative externalities on other researchers. Disciplinary ARE journals may want to abide by these norms to maintain credibility, but interdisciplinary ARE journals may have more flexibility though it is important to provide guidelines to avoid too much reviewer-specific variation in standards. For ARE researchers, we suggest employing a deception-free experimental design whenever possible because we know of no field in which deception is encouraged. JEL Classification: C90, Q10, Q30, Q50 Acknowledgements. For helpful comments, we would like to thank (without implicating) participants at the CBEARMAAP conference, and Simanti Banerjee, Carola Grebitus, David Cooper, Guillaume Fréchette, Nick Hanley, Marco Palma, Sharon Raszap, Stephanie Rosch, Matt Rousu, and Christian Vossler. Wu gratefully acknowledges financial support from USDA-NIFA HATCH project IND010580.