ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the experimental method of economics as conceptualized by one of its founding fathers, Vernon Smith. It presents the procedures whereby economists create and study microeconomic phenomena in their labs, and provides an illustration of how economists do this – Smith’s first market experiments. It shows that, similarly to experimentation in the natural sciences, the practice of experimental economists can also be depicted as the forging of three-coherences until they are confident that the phenomenon created is no artefact of the experimental procedures.
