Activity-Based Economics as Experimental Science

Recent papers emphasize moving beyond chalk and talk by using active learning strategies to teach principles of economics. Another literature emphasizes benefits of using active methods to teach economics at the high school level. A related literature, independently developed by 2002 Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith and others, formalizes experimental techniques for studying economic decision making, often using classrooms as laboratories. This paper analyzes active learning lessons designed for high schools against the criteria used in economics experiments designed by Smith and others. The conclusion is that activity-based lessons do a good job of satisfying the conditions sufficient for economic experiments. Those not satisfying the experimentalist conditions often require only modest revision to qualify or were never intended to be experiments in the first place.