LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS FOR ECONOMIC POLICY MAKING

In this paper, we assess the scope and the specific contribution of laboratory experiments for economic policy making. We review experiments which have addressed a specific problem, institution, mechanism design or tool relevant in economic policy. We have two research questions. What type of policy questions can be addressed in the laboratory ? And what is the specific value added of economic experiments for policy making. The survey contains experiments on competition policy, auctions, regulated markets, and emission permits.