@article{Grüner:284976,
      recid = {284976},
      author = {Grüner, Sven  and Hirschauer, Norbert  and Mußhoff, Oliver  },
      title = {The Potential of Different Experimental Designs for   Policy Impact Assessment},
      journal = {German Journal of Agricultural Economics},
      address = {2016-09},
      number = {670-2019-668},
      year = {2016},
      abstract = {Economic experiments have traditionally been conducted in  laboratory settings. Since experimental conditions can be  easily controlled and manipulated in the lab, high internal  validity can be achieved. The external validity of lab  experiments, however, is often poor due to the highly  stylized environment. Hence, in recent years, researchers  have increasingly left the lab and used the Internet to run  economic experiments. In this paper, we aim to systematize  economic experiments and discuss the advantages and  disadvantages of online approaches. In particular, we focus  on the question of how experiments can be used for policy  analysis in the agricultural sector. Our core findings are  as follows: first, the costs of online experiments are  considerably lower than those of traditional lab  experiments. This applies to the direct costs of  experimenters as well as to the opportunity costs of  experimental subjects. Second, experimenters, who always  struggle with limited budgets, can exploit the cost  advantage of online approaches and take various measures to  increase external validity. Spare funds can be used to  recruit more participants and/or to grant higher  performance-related payoffs. In conjunction with  participants’ reduced opportunity costs, they will also  make it easier to recruit representatives of the social  group of interest (e.g., farmers), instead of using  convenience groups of students as surrogate experimental  subjects. A high-numbered experimental testing of the real  behavior of real decision makers who face relevant real  payoffs has a good chance to increase the quality of  conditional behavioral forecasting. This, in turn, is the  prerequisite of reliable policy analysis. Third, decisions  in online experiments are made in the familiar setting of  people’s home offices. The situational context is thus much  more similar to decision making in regular life than a lab  setting. While being beneficial for external validity,  using the home setting also entails a disadvantage. It  reduces internal validity because the extra-laboratory  decision environment cannot be well controlled.  Experimenters cannot observe, for example, which sources of  information, tools, time, and effort participants use to  arrive at experimental decisions.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/284976},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.284976},
}