Reflections on 20 Years Running Experiments in the Field to Understand the Commons

The use of economic experiments has played a major role in transforming the economics discipline. Thanks to a number of key experiments in the last decades that have shown some regularities, the assumptions and canonical models of economics have changed. Within these, the problem of cooperation has seen major contributions from laboratory experiments, best exemplified by the seminal book “Games, Rules and Common-Pool Resources” by Elinor Ostrom, Roy Gardner, and James Walker. This book triggered in the mid-90s a number of studies using experimental methods in the laboratory. Thanks to the designs in this book, Cardenas was able to translate and adapt the CPR game to a field setting and engage in a dialogue with communities that continues to enrich the understanding of why and when do communities solve the tragedy of the commons. Cardenas will also explore the use of experiments as pedagogical tools in which platforms for dialogue are open, with a few recent examples from the field.