IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/arerjl/31550.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Experimental Methods In Agricultural And Resource Economics: How Useful Are They?

Author

Listed:
  • Fisher, Ann
  • Wheeler, William J.
  • Zwick, Rami

Abstract

Experimental economics has the potential to fill some of the gaps in the economist's tool kit. This article describes experimental economics, its advantages and disadvantages, and why this tool might be a good choice in some situations. The article summarizes the history of its use by agricultural and resource economists. An illustrative example compares laboratory experiment data with survey data.

Suggested Citation

  • Fisher, Ann & Wheeler, William J. & Zwick, Rami, 1993. "Experimental Methods In Agricultural And Resource Economics: How Useful Are They?," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 22(2), pages 1-14, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:arerjl:31550
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.31550
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/31550/files/22020103.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.31550?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven T. Buccola, 1985. "Pricing Efficiency in Centralized and Noncentralized Markets," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 67(3), pages 583-590.
    2. Shogren, Jason F. & Seung Y. Shin & Dermot J. Hayes & James B. Kliebenstein, 1994. "Resolving Differences in Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 255-270, March.
    3. repec:bla:scandj:v:86:y:1984:i:4:p:468-84 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Jack L. Knetsch & J. A. Sinden, 1984. "Willingness to Pay and Compensation Demanded: Experimental Evidence of an Unexpected Disparity in Measures of Value," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(3), pages 507-521.
    5. Donald N. McCloskey, 1990. "Agon and Ag Ec: Styles of Persuasion in Agricultural Economics," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 72(5), pages 1124-1130.
    6. Brookshire, David S & Coursey, Don L & Schulze, William D, 1987. "The External Validity of Experimental Economics Techniques: Analysis of Demand Behavior," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(2), pages 239-250, April.
    7. Shogren, Jason F., 1989. "Fairness in bargaining requires a context : An experimental examination of loyalty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 319-323, December.
    8. Prince, Raymond & McKee, Michael & Ben-David, Shaul & Bagnoli, Mark, 1992. "Improving the contingent valuation method: Implementing the contribution game," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 78-90, July.
    9. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    10. Norton, Roger D. & Patrick, Robert H., 1985. "A note on Prudencio's experimental tests of the coase propositions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 96-100, March.
    11. Randall, Alan & Stoll, John R, 1980. "Consumer's Surplus in Commodity Space," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 449-455, June.
    12. Hoffman, Elizabeth & Spitzer, Matthew L, 1982. "The Coase Theorem: Some Experimental Tests," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 73-98, April.
    13. Don Coursey, 1987. "Markets and the measurement of value," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 291-297, October.
    14. Bergstrom, John C. & Stoll, John R., 1989. "Application Of Experimentatal Economics Concepts And Precepts To Cvm Field Survey Procedures," Western Journal of Agricultural Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 14(1), pages 1-12, July.
    15. Marwell, Gerald & Ames, Ruth E., 1981. "Economists free ride, does anyone else? : Experiments on the provision of public goods, IV," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 295-310, June.
    16. Jeff Bennett & Ben Smith, 1985. "The Estimation of Indifference Maps by Expected Utility Analysis," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 67(4), pages 833-838.
    17. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L., 1992. "Valuing public goods: The purchase of moral satisfaction," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 57-70, January.
    18. John C. Bergstrom & John R. Stoll & Alan Randall, 1989. "Information Effects in Contingent Markets," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 71(3), pages 685-691.
    19. Menkhaus, Dale J. & Borden, George W. & Whipple, Glen D. & Hoffman, Elizabeth & Field, Ray A., 1992. "An Empirical Application Of Laboratory Experimental Auctions In Marketing Research," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 17(1), pages 1-12, July.
    20. Weg, Eythan & Zwick, Rami, 1991. "On the rebustness of perfect equilibrium in fixed cost sequential bargaining under an isomorphic transformation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 21-24, May.
    21. Walker, James M. & Gardner, Roy & Ostrom, Elinor, 1990. "Rent dissipation in a limited-access common-pool resource: Experimental evidence," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 203-211, November.
    22. McCloskey, Donald N., 1990. "Agon and Ag Ec: Styles of Persuasion in Agricultural Economics," 1990 Annual meeting, August 5-8, Vancouver, Canada 271005, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    23. Mary Jo Kealy & John F. Dovidio & Mark L. Rockel, 1988. "Accuracy in Valuation Is a Matter of Degree," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 64(2), pages 158-171.
    24. Robin Gregory & Lita Furby, 1987. "Auctions, experiments and contingent valuation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 273-289, October.
    25. Thaler, Richard H, 1988. "The Ultimatum Game," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 195-206, Fall.
    26. Richard Beilock & Peter Garrod & Walter Miklius, 1986. "Freight Charge Variations in Truck Transport Markets: Price Discrimination or Competitive Pricing?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 68(2), pages 226-236.
    27. Shogren, Jason F. & Nowell, Clifford, 1992. "Economics and ecology: a comparison of experimental methodologies and philosophies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 101-126, May.
    28. Don L. Coursey & John L. Hovis & William D. Schulze, 1987. "The Disparity Between Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay Measures of Value," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 679-690.
    29. Hanemann, W Michael, 1991. "Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Accept: How Much Can They Differ?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 635-647, June.
    30. Brookshire, David S & Coursey, Don L, 1987. "Measuring the Value of a Public Good: An Empirical Comparison of Elicitation Procedures," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 554-566, September.
    31. Dr. David L. Debertin & Dr. Angelos Pagoulatos, 1992. "Research in Agricultural Economics 1919–1990: Seventy-Two Years of Change," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 14(1), pages 1-22.
    32. Jack L. Knetsch & J. A. Sinden, 1987. "The Persistence of Evaluation Disparities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(3), pages 691-695.
    33. Morgan, Theodore, 1988. "Theory versus Empiricism in Academic Economics: Update and Comparison s," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 159-164, Fall.
    34. Don Coursey & William Schulze, 1986. "The application of laboratory experimental economics to the contingent valuation of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 47-68, January.
    35. Plott, Charles R, 1982. "Industrial Organization Theory and Experimental Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 20(4), pages 1485-1527, December.
    36. Binmore, Ken & Morgan, Peter & Snaked, Avner & Sutton, John, 1991. "Do people exploit their bargaining power? An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 295-322, August.
    37. Kealy, Mary Jo & Montgomery, Mark & Dovidio, John F., 1990. "Reliability and predictive validity of contingent values: Does the nature of the good matter?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 244-263, November.
    38. Walker, James M & Gardner, Roy, 1992. "Probabilistic Destruction of Common-Pool Resources: Experimental Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(414), pages 1149-1161, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Juan Camilo Cárdenas, 2009. "Experiments in Environment and Development," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 157-182, September.
    2. Yuan, Hong & Krishna, Aradhna, 2011. "Price-Matching Guarantees with Endogenous Search: A Market Experiment Approach," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 182-193.
    3. Spencer, Michael A. & Swallow, Stephen K. & Miller, Christopher J., 1998. "Valuing Water Quality Monitoring: A Contingent Valuation Experiment Involving Hypothetical And Real Payments," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 27(1), pages 1-15, April.
    4. Janusch, Nicholas & Palm-Forster, Leah H. & Messer, Kent D. & Ferraro, Paul J., 2017. "Behavioral Insights for Agri-Environmental Program and Policy Design," 2018 Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting, January 5-7, 2018, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 266299, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Trenkel, Hermann E., 2005. "Möglichkeiten experimenteller Methoden in der Agrarökonomie," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 40, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shogren, Jason F., 2006. "Experimental Methods and Valuation," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 19, pages 969-1027, Elsevier.
    2. Bodo Sturm & Joachim Weimann, 2006. "Experiments in Environmental Economics and Some Close Relatives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 419-457, July.
    3. Shogren, Jason F., 1993. "Experimental Markets and Environmental Policy," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 117-129, October.
    4. John K. Horowitz & Kenneth E. McConnell & James J. Murphy, 2013. "Behavioral foundations of environmental economics and valuation," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 4, pages 115-156, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Horowitz, John K. & McConnell, Kenneth E., 2002. "A Review of WTA/WTP Studies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 426-447, November.
    6. Bowker, J. M. & MacDonald, H. F., 1992. "An Economic Analysis of Localized Pollution: Rendering Emissions in a Residential Setting," 1992 Annual Meeting, August 9-12, Baltimore, Maryland 271381, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    7. Shogren, Jason F. & Cho, Sungwon & Koo, Cannon & List, John & Park, Changwon & Polo, Pablo & Wilhelmi, Robert, 2001. "Auction mechanisms and the measurement of WTP and WTA," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 97-109, April.
    8. Morrison, Gwendolyn C., 2000. "WTP and WTA in repeated trial experiments: Learning or leading?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 57-72, February.
    9. Shogren, Jason F., 2002. "A behavioral mindset on environment policy," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 355-369.
    10. Sayman, Serdar & Onculer, Ayse, 2005. "Effects of study design characteristics on the WTA-WTP disparity: A meta analytical framework," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 289-312, April.
    11. Edward J. Lopez & W. Robert Nelson, 2005. "The Endowment Effect in a Public Good Experiment," Experimental 0512001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Lucy F. Ackert & Bryan K. Church & Gerald P. Dwyer, 2005. "When the shoe is on the other foot: experimental evidence on evaluation disparities," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2005-17, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    13. Oben K Bayrak & Bengt Kriström, 2016. "Is there a valuation gap? The case of interval valuations," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(1), pages 218-236.
    14. Veisten, Knut, 2007. "Contingent valuation controversies: Philosophic debates about economic theory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 204-232, April.
    15. Zhao, Jinhua & Kling, Catherine L., 2001. "A new explanation for the WTP/WTA disparity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 293-300, December.
    16. Morrison, Gwendolyn C., 1998. "Understanding the disparity between WTP and WTA: endowment effect, substitutability, or imprecise preferences?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 189-194, May.
    17. Beja Jr, Edsel, 2012. "Two explanations to the willingness to accept and willingness to pay gap plus an alternative," MPRA Paper 36239, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Steffen Huck & Georg Kirchsteiger & Jörg Oechssler, 2005. "Learning to like what you have - explaining the endowment effect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 689-702, July.
    19. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    20. List, John A., 2004. "Substitutability, experience, and the value disparity: evidence from the marketplace," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 486-509, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Research Methods/ Statistical Methods;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:arerjl:31550. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nareaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.