Category: Hot Topics

Institutions Matter: Experiments in Real Life

We don’t usually think of conducting experiments in social science. What would the mad social scientist do – imprison two groups of people in plastic bubble-biomes and use one as the control group while administering different economic or social policies to the other? Not likely! But, every once in awhile, social science ‘experiments’ happen on their own, and when we are alert enough to recognize them, we can learn a great deal.