Field Experiments

Experimental economists are leaving the reservation. They are recruiting subjects in the field rather than in the classroom, using field goods rather than induced valuations, and using field context rather than abstract terminology in instructions. We argue that there is something methodologically fundamental behind this trend. Field experiments differ from laboratory experiments in many ways. Although it is tempting to view field experiments as simply less controlled variants of laboratory experiments, we argue that to do so would be to seriously mischaracterize them. What passes for “control” in laboratory experiments might in fact be precisely the opposite if it is artificial to the subject or context of the task. We propose six factors that can be used to determine the field context of an experiment: the nature of the subject pool, the nature of the information that the subjects bring to the task, the nature of the commodity, the nature of the task or trading rules applied, the nature of the stakes, and the environment that subjects operate in. † Department of Economics, College of Business Administration, University of Central Florida (Harrison), and Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Department of Economics, University of Maryland, and National Bureau of Economic Research (List). Email contacts: [email protected] and [email protected]. We are grateful to Stephen Burks, Colin Camerer, Jeffrey Carpenter, Shelby Gerking, R. Mark Isaac, John McMillan, Andreas Ortmann, Charles Plott, David Reiley, E. Elisabet Rutström, Nathaniel Wilcox and the referees for generous comments.