The Role of Computers in the Emergence of Experimental Economics Laboratories: Material Culture and Moral Economy

Abstract

The emergence of experimental economics laboratories is tied to adopting computers as key instruments for conducting experimental research in economics. Various ways in which computer technology as a new form of material culture in experimental economics changed the practice of economics experimentation are examined. First, competing technologies for connecting computers and experimental subjects sitting behind them were used by two leading figures of experimental economics. Vernon Smith’s Economic Science Laboratory (ESL) at the University of Arizona, established in 1985, used touch-screen terminals connected to a time-sharing mainframe computer in Illinois. In contrast, Charles Plott’s Laboratory for Experimental Economics and Political Science (EEPS) at Caltech, founded in 1987, used locally networked personal computers. Each technological solution had different implications for the laboratory infrastructure, the types of experiments that could easily be programmed and conducted, and the interaction of experimental subjects. Eventually, local ethernet networks became the standard, and EEPS became a model for other laboratories. Besides technological standardization, I also analyze computer technology’s operational and conceptual impact on experimental economics practice. However, one needs to go beyond investigating the experimental economics laboratory’s material culture to explain the laboratories’ rapid proliferation at the turn of the 1980s when experimental economics came of age. I identify the culture of sharing software among experimental economists as a key communal norm and part of experimental economists’ moral economy as a key factor in this transformation.

Keywords

• experimental economics
• laboratory
• material culture
• moral economy
• computerization