Field experiment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (November 2008)

A field experiment applies the scientific method to experimentally examine an intervention in the real world (or as many experimental economists like to say, naturally-occurring environments) rather than in the laboratory. Field experiments, like lab experiments, generally randomize subjects (or other sampling units) into treatment and control groups and compare outcomes between these groups. Clinical trials of pharmaceuticals are one example of field experiments. Economists have used field experiments to analyze discrimination, health care programs, charitable fundraising, education, information aggregation in markets, and microfinance programs.

Contents 1 History 2 Caveats 3 Sources 4 References

[edit] History

Of course, the use of experiments in the lab and the field have a long history in the natural and life sciences. Geology has a long history of field experiments, since the time of Avicenna.^[1] Social psychology also has a history of field experiments, including work by pioneering figures Philip Zimbardo, Kurt Lewin and Stanley Milgram. In economics, Peter Bohm, University of Stockholm, was one of the first economists to take the tools of experimental economic methods and attempt to try them with field subjects. In the area of development economics, the pioneer work of Hans Binswanger in the late 1970s conducting experiments in India on risk behavior [1] should also be noted. The use of field experiments in economics has grown recently with the work of John A. List, Jeff Carpenter, Juan-Camilo Cardenas, Abigail Barr, Catherine Eckel, Michael Kremer, Glenn Harrison, Colin Camerer, Bradley Ruffle, Esther Duflo, Dean Karlan, Edward "Ted" Miguel, Sendhil Mullainathan, David H. Reiley, among others.

[edit] Caveats

• Fairness of randomization (e.g. in 'negative income tax' experiments communities may lobby for their community to get a cash transfer so the assignment is not purely random)
• Contamination of the randomization
• General equilibrium and "scaling-up"
• Difficulty of replicability (field experiments often require special access or permission, or technical detail-- e.g., the instructions for precisely how to replicate a field experiment are rarely if ever available in economics)
• Limits on ability to obtain informed consent of participants

[edit] Sources

• John List's homepage
  • "Field Experiments." GW Harrison, JA List. Journal of Economic Literature. Vol. XLII (December 2004) pp. 1009–1055.
• Michael Kremer's homepage
• Esther Duflo's homepage
• Dean Karlan's homepage
• Colin Camerer's home page
• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab's homepage
• Innovations for Poverty Action's homepage

[edit] References