Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-plnhv Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-08-18T23:45:03.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Behavioral experiments” in economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Roberto A. Weber  and
Colin F. Camerer
Roberto A. Weber*
Affiliation:
Department of Social & Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University
Colin F. Camerer*
Affiliation:
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology
*
e-mail: rweber@andrew.cmu.edu
e-mail: camerer@hss.caltech.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Behavioral economics has grown significantly in importance and prevalence within the economics profession over the last couple of decades. Most economics departments now include researchers conducting behavioral research, and most economics journals regularly publish behavioral work.

Behavioral economics is generally defined as using evidence and constructs from neighboring social sciences, especially about limits on computation, willpower, and self-interest, to inform economic analysis (e.g., Camerer and Loewenstein, 2003). While many of these constructs come from psychology, other social sciences have much to contribute as well (see Weber and Dawes, 2005). For instance, anthropological research has provided important insights into the understanding of how social institutions and interactions shape strategic behavior (see Henrich et al., 2001).

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 9 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Behavioral Economics , September 2006 , pp. 187 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Economic Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Andreoni, J. (1995). Cooperation in public goods experiments: kindness or confusion? American Economic Review, 85(4), 891–904.Google Scholar
Camerer, C., & Loewenstein, G. (2003). The introduction to the book Advances in Behavioral Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2005). Neuroeconomics: how neuroscience can inform economics. Journal of Economic Literature, XLIII, 9–64.10.1257/0022051053737843CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charness, G., & Rabin, M. (2002). Understanding social preferences with simple tests. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(3), 817–869.10.1162/003355302760193904CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, D. J., & Kagel, J. H. (2004). Learning and transfer in signaling games. Unpublished manuscriptGoogle Scholar
Costa Gomes, M., Crawford, V. P., & Bruno, B. (2001). Cognition and behavior in normal-form games: an experimental study. Econometrica, 69, 1193–1235.10.1111/1468-0262.00239CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dana, J., Weber, R. A., & Xi Kuang, J. (2006). Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Devetag, G., & Warglien, M. (in press). Playing the wrong game: An experimental analysis of relational complexity and strategic misrepresentation. Games and Economic Behavior.Google Scholar
Engelmann, D., & Strobel, M. (2004). Inequality aversion, efficiency, and maximin preferences in simple distribution experiments. American Economic Review, 94(4), 857–869.10.1257/0002828042002741CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1993). Protocol analysis: verbal reports as data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/5657.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Gachter, S. (2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. American Economic Review, 90, 980–994.10.1257/aer.90.4.980CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forsythe, R., Horowitz, J., Savin, N. E., & Sefton, M. (1994). Fairness in simple bargaining experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 6, 347–369.10.1006/game.1994.1021CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grether, D. M., & Plott, C. R. (1979). Economic theory of choice and the preference reversal phenomenon. The American Economic Review, 69(4), 623–638.Google Scholar
Grether, D. M. (1980). Bayes rule as a descriptive model: The representativeness heuristic. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 96(3), 537–557.10.2307/1885092CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, E., McCabe, K., Shachat, K., & Smith, V. L. Preferences, property rights, and anonymity in bargaining games. Games and Economic Behavior, 7(3), 346–380.10.1006/game.1994.1056CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsu, M., Bhatt, M., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., & Camerer, C. F. (2005). Neural systems responding to degrees of uncertainty in human decision-making. Science, 310(5754), 1680–1683.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, E. J., Colin, C., Sankar, S., & Rymon, T. (2002). Detecting failures of backward induction: monitoring information search in sequential bargaining. Journal of Economic Theory, 104(1), 16–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Gintis, H., McElreath, R., & Fehr, E. (2001). In search of Homo economicus: experiments in 15 small-scale societies. American Economic Review, 91(2), 73–79.10.1257/aer.91.2.73CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazear, E. P., Malmendier, U., & Weber, R. A. (2006). Sorting in experiments with application to social preferences. NBER Working Paper.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, A. (2006). Instinctive and cognitive reasoning: A study of response times. Working paper10.2139/ssrn.889310CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanfey, A. G., Loewenstein, G., McClure, S. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2006). Neuroeconomics: cross-currents in research on decision-making. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 108–11610.1016/j.tics.2006.01.009CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sefton, M., Shupp, R., & Walker, J. (2002). The effect of rewards and sanctions in provision of public goods. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Sutter, M. S. H., & Kocher, M. (2006). Choosing the stick or the carrot? Endogenous institutional choices in social dilemma situations.Google Scholar
Van Huyck, J., Battalio, R., & Beil, R. (1990). Tacit coordination games, strategic uncertainty and coordination failure. The American Economic Review, 80, 234–248.Google Scholar
Weber, R. A. (2006). Managing growth to achieve efficient coordination in large groups. The American Economic Review, 96(1), 114–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, R. A., & Dawes, R. (2005). Behavioral economics. In N. Smelser & R. Swedberg (eds.) Handbook of economic sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Yamagishi, T. (1986). The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 110–116.10.1037/0022-3514.51.1.110CrossRefGoogle Scholar