Writing good economics: how texts 'on the move' perform the lab and discipline of experimental economics

Kristin Asdal and Béatrice Cointe ()
Additional contact information
Kristin Asdal: UiO - University of Oslo
Béatrice Cointe: CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: How is objectivity accomplished in laboratory economic experiments? To address this question, this paper focuses on a modest and mundane thing: the written instructions that guide experimental subjects in the lab. In a material-semiotic perspective, these instructions can be understood as text-devices. We follow text-devices ‘on the move' from their very writing, through the lab, the review process and out into the journal article. To do so, we analyse ‘text-author ensembles', which are journal articles together with practice-oriented interviews with their authors. We show that instructions act not simply as texts, but as experimental instruments that also perform the procedure of experimental economics. They draw together the procedural, material and rhetorical dimensions of experimental work in economics, and link the lab setting to collective validation procedures within the discipline of economics. To achieve this, experimental economists rely on qualitative writing skills refined in collective writing and reviewing practices. These text-devices ‘on the move' alert us not only to the role of writing and writing skills in the production of scientific knowledge, but to the role of texts as material and semiotic objects that can produce facts as well as labs and disciplines, and that are key to the accomplishment of objectivity in experimental economics.

Keywords: economics; experiments; texts; performativity; laboratory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-sog
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03429169v2
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Social Studies of Science, 2022, ⟨10.1177/03063127221079600⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03429169v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03429169

DOI: 10.1177/03063127221079600

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().