À propos du statut épistémologique des expériences en économie

The use of experiments in economics emerged in the immediate post-war period, and even before in the 1930s. Furthermore, it experienced a major boom since the 1970s, with a consecration in the 2000s through the award of Nobel Prizes for experimental economics, and more recently the similar recognition of the pioneering work of Esther Duflo on Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in development economics. In this article, we focus on the two most commonly used methodologies: on the one hand those that fall into the category of experimental economics and on the other, RCTs. Although they share the same basic principle of engendering an observation in order to study certain phenomena, they differ in their origin and epistemological status. On the one hand, experimental economics, oriented towards theory, finds its origins in the 1970s in a refutationist approach. On the other hand, RCTs, oriented towards the evaluation of public policies, have confirmationist origins. However, we argue that the joint influence of the two methodologies subsequently put into question the conception of economics described by Hausman [1992] as ?an inaccurate and separate science?. Indeed, experimental Economics and RCTs have turned economics into a less generalist and more contextualized discipline. They have also forced researchers, both experimentalists and theorists to rethink the very definition of the domain of economics. While some are trying to make it more specific, others are trying to broaden it, based on their different conceptions of interdisciplinarity. Finally, it seems that neither of the two types of experimental methodology really question the theory of rationality as a normative reference. JEL Classification : B21, B23, B41, C91, C92, C93, N01, Z18