The Handbook of Experimental Economics

by John H. Kagel (editor), Alvin E. Roth (Editor)

This book, which comprises eight chapters, presents a comprehensive critical survey of the results and methods of laboratory experiments in economics. The first chapter provides an introduction to experimental economics as a whole, with the remaining chapters providing surveys by leading practitioners in areas of economics that have seen a concentration of public goods, coordination problems, bargaining, industrial organization, asset markets, auctions, and individual decision making.


The work aims both to help specialists set an agenda for future research and to provide nonspecialists with a critical review of work completed to date. Its focus is on elucidating the role of experimental studies as a progressive research tool so that wherever possible, emphasis is on series of experiments that build on one another. The contributors to the volume--Colin Camerer, Charles A. Holt, John H. Kagel, John O. Ledyard, Jack Ochs, Alvin E. Roth, and Shyam Sunder--adopt a particular methodological point of the way to learn how to design and conduct experiments is to consider how good experiments grow organically out of the issues and hypotheses they are designed to investigate.

Genres: Economics, Science, Academic

744 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 1995

About the author

John Henry Kagel is University Chaired Professor of Applied Economics and Director of the Economics Laboratory at the Ohio State University. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Mershon Center for International Studies at Ohio State. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and past President of the Economic Science Association (aka Society for Experimental Economics). He has served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation in the Economics Division and in the Decision, Risk and Management Division. He has served on the editorial board of the American Economic Review and currently serves on the editorial boards of the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics and Experimental Economics. He has won outstanding research awards at the University of Pittsburgh and Ohio State University.

Professor Kagel’s research interests currently focus on group decision making and learning in strategic interactions between agents, auction design and performance, industrial organization issues, and legislative bargaining. He has done notable research on individual decision making and on the intersection between economics and psychology. He belongs to the core group of pioneers who have established experimental economics as a standard methodology of research and teaching in economics. His has published over 90 articles in peer reviewed journals including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Psychological Review, American Political Science Review, and Management Science. He has six co-authored monographs, including the highly influential Handbook of Experimental Economics (Princeton University Press, 1995) co-edited with Alvin Roth.