Review of Field Experiments in Economics: History and Methodology, by Judith Favereau and Michiru Nagatsu, New York, USA, and Abingdon, UK, Routledge, 2025, xvi + 119 pages, ISBN Digital (PDF) 978-0-429-20255-1

Dan-Andrei Năfureanu
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Dan-Andrei Năfureanu: UniBuc - Universitatea din București = University of Bucharest = Université de Bucarest

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Abstract: Control, this review argues, is the concept on which the methodology of experimental economics quietly turns, and Judith Favereau and Michiru Nagatsu's Field Experiments in Economics: History and Methodology (Routledge, 2025) is a thorough and sustained attempt to examine it across both traditions of field experimentation. The review reconstructs the book's genealogy of lab-in-the-field experiments and randomized field experiments, its distinction between direct and indirect control, and its diagnosis of what each tradition sacrifices for internal validity, construct validity in one case and generalizability in the other. It gives particular weight to the redefinition of control as an "inferential affordance," to the hybrid methodology built around the exhibit, and to the political turn that sets a participatory experiment against Esther Duflo's "democratic paternalism." Three reservations follow: the compatibility of epistemic and political control is asserted rather than shown, adaptive preferences and informed consent receive no treatment, and the appeal to participants as witnesses to their own motives conflicts with the book's account of constructed preferences.

Keywords: Validity; Control; Philosophy of Science; Economics; Lab-in-the-Field Experiment; Randomized Field Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09-18
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