The Experimental Study of Behaviour in Economics1

The study of behavior in economics using paid experiments has a history of about half a century. This article tracks not just the chronological history of the field of experimental economics but the intellectual history of the way agent behavior has been studied in eco-nomics since the advent of the rational-actor framework in the nine-teenth century. I examine the methodologies that form the bedrock of experimentation in economics, their origins, their advantages and their antecedents. I also explore the manner in which experimental economics has enabled theories and frameworks from fields in social sciences like psychology, anthropology and political science to influence the way behavior is modeled in economics, leading to newer theoretica