Economists’ natural experiments depend on infrastructure built by real-world projects

Evidence

A natural experiment in economics is not an experiment carried out in nature. It is an establishing of facts carried out in a world that has been organized to make it possible for economic knowledge to be made. Latour refers to this organizing work as “metrology,” meaning “the gigantic enterprise to make of the outside a world inside which facts … can survive” (Latour 1987, 251; see also Mitchell 2002, chapter 3). Experiments to establish the facts of economics depend on projects carried out in the wider world to create sites where economic knowledge can gain a purchase. These sites, though larger than an ordinary laboratory, are nevertheless quite closely defined spaces—specific neighborhoods in particular cities of Peru, the local offices of a development organization and a neoliberal think tank, the text of a survey questionnaire and its administrators, the offices of a parent organization in Washington that provides the funds. As Latour points out, to provide a secure site for establishing facts, these locations must be well connected to one another. The interconnections establish the routes along which facts can travel and be confirmed. They also shape what kinds of facts can survive. To understand the outcome of the academic experiment in Peru, we must understand these routes created by the larger neoliberal political experiment. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1940

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This reframes the natural experiment as metrology made possible by political and institutional infrastructure—economic facts are not discovered but constructed at organized sites. Dense enough to sit with for days.
• XREF: Links Latour’s actor-network theory to the celebrated Peru titling study; resonates with the reader’s interest in how knowledge claims get their authority and how empirical economics depends on prior institutional arrangements. — connects to: Neoliberal restructuring programs served as whole-economy experiments producing economic facts. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1917; Economics tests claims by treating the world itself as a laboratory. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1915; Neoliberal policy experiments are preconditions that make economic research findings possible — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1955 (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Defines ‘natural experiment’ and ‘metrology’ as the organizing that allows economic facts to survive.

Broader Connections

• Economic ‘natural experiments’ depend on prior policy programs, not nature #expands (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1985
• Scientific projects are always part of larger social projects rather than separate from them #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1599
• Natural experiments use policy changes to produce quasi-random variation in data #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1936
• Prior experiments determine which economic facts even become available and plausible #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1986
• Economists concede that so-called natural experiments are rarely truly natural. #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2009
• Neoliberal policies produced experiments whose results fed yet more neoliberal projects #exemplifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1983