The Experiment in the History of Economics

Until recently, there was long resistance to the idea that economics can lend itself to experimentation. Going back at least as far as John Stuart Mill and continuing until very recently, it was widely held that economics was not an experimental discipline.
The contributions in this book show, however, that the concept of the "experiment" has been persistently present, in various guises, throughout the history of the field. This has been most obviously shown by the post-war rise of behavioral economics, to which experimentation is central - but the tradition can actually be shown to have started much earlier with some of Wicksell's work on monetary reform foreshadowing the operations of the pioneers.

Philippe Fontaine is co-editor with Albert Jolink of Historical Perspectives on Macroeconomics (Routledge, 1998)
Robert Leonard is an expert on the history of game theory and experimental economics. He is a Professor of Economics at the University of Quebec.