Traditionally, students of economics have often been told that it is a non-experimental science. Using a quantitative … and qualitative analysis of introductory economics textbooks, we track the historical evolution of this rhetoric from 1970 … experimentation in economics. Remarks that experiments are impossible in economics have been (almost) eliminated only this decade …

economics (EE). This article aims to address this lacuna. To do so, we analyze the use of statistical tools in EE from early … economics experiments of the 1940s-1950s to the present days. Our narrative is based on qualitative analysis of papers published …