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Economics laboratories have become the primary locations of experimental economics research by the 1990s. They were a result of a decade long development from ad hoc opportune places to dedicated, purpose designed spaces. The distinctive feature of the economics laboratory and its key instrument became networked computers running custom-built software. However, the history of the economics laboratory is not just a history of evolving technology. I argue in this article that it is mainly a history of learning how to build an experimental economics community. Only a functioning community was able to change a physical place to a laboratory space. The distinction between place and space originates in the work of Michael de Certeau and I use it to analyze the evolution of economics laboratories. To this end, I analyze the case of Austin Hoggatt’s Management Science Laboratory at Berkeley in the 1960s as it illustrates the indispensability of creating a community centered on the laboratory. In contrast, the laboratories in Arizona and at Caltech since the 1980s, and in Amsterdam since the 1990s have become successful spaces, because, unlike Hoggatt, they focused equally on community building as on infrastructure and technology. This gave rise to social infrastructure and division of labor in the laboratory space.

Experimental economics has been treated with skepticism by some Austrian economists. We argue that experimental methods are consistent with strong versions of praxeology, and are therefore not methodologically problematic for Austrians. We further argue that experimental research methods have illustrated many uniquely Austrian themes and provide a fruitful method for future Austrian-inspired research.

What is behavioral economics? This chapter explores a mismatch between what is included in the field of behavioral economics and some of the most visible Austrian critiques of behavioral economics. While paternalism, nudging, and a focus on irrationalities and biases are a big part of modern behavioral economics, the portrayal of the field of behavioral economics as being focused predominately upon those areas leaves a swath of low-hanging fruit that would be beneficial for Austrian scholars to consume and use in their own work.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the time is ripe to establish a powerful tradition in Experimental International Business (IB). Probably due to what the Arjen van Witteloostuijn refers to as the external validity myth, experimental laboratory designs are underutilized in IB, which implies that the internal validity miracle of randomized experimentation goes largely unnoticed in this domain of the broader management discipline.

In the following pages, the author explains why the author believes this implies a missed opportunity, providing arguments and examples along the way.

Although an Experimental Management tradition has never really gained momentum, to the author, the lab experimental design has a very bright future in IB (and management at large). To facilitate the development of an Experimental IB tradition, initiating web-based tools would be highly instrumental. This will not only boost further progress in IB research, but will also increase the effectiveness and playfulness of IB teaching.

Given the high potential of an Experimental IB, the Cross-Cultural and Strategic Management journal will offer a platform for such exciting and intriguing laboratory work, cumulatively contributing to the establishment of an Experimental IB tradition.

George Loewenstein, a prominent behavioral economist, recalls thatIn 1994, when Thaler, Camerer, Rabin, Prelec and I spent the year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, we had a meeting to make a kind of final decision about what to call what we were doing. Remarkably, at that time, the name behavioral economics was not yet well established. I actually advocated “psychological economics,” and Thaler was strong on behavioral economics. I'm kind of glad that he prevailed; I think it's a better, catchier, label, although it creates confusion due to association with Behaviorism. (G. Loewenstein, personal email to author, June 16, 2008)

How should economists incorporate culture into their economic analysis? What empirical approaches to identifying, measuring, and analyzing the relationship between culture and economic action are most appropriate for economists? In particular, what can experimental economists learn from the methods of economic anthropologists, sociologists, and historians who study culture? We argue that while both quantitative and qualitative approaches can reveal interesting relationships between culture and economic actions/outcomes, especially in experimental research designs, qualitative methods help economists better understand people’s economic choices and the economic outcomes that emerge from those choices. This is because qualitative studies conceptualize culture as a pattern of meaning, take the relevant cultural data to be people’s thoughts and feelings, treat the market as a cultural phenomenon, and allow for novel explanations.

This paper uses the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) among students from different South-East (SE) European countries, considering various personal and situational variables. The authors examine how the regional cultural context affects individual perceptions and beliefs about entrepreneurship, which in turn form the basis of the cognitive antecedents of the TPB model.

Using a sample of 850 respondents, the authors estimate a two-level model, addressing the issue of endogeneity in the relationship between attitudes and beliefs and the respondents' EI. Specifically, the authors focus on heterogeneity across nations in attitudes toward entrepreneurial behavior (ATEB), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC).

The results show that the perceived behavioral control and the attitude toward entrepreneurial behavior are the main determinants of Balkan students' EI. The authors find that the role of SE European culture in entrepreneurship intentions does not follow the Western pattern. In this particular regional environment dominated by collectivist culture, students' EIs are influenced more by cooperation, caring for others and other non-monetary benefits.

Like any study, this study has limitations. First, all the variables were measured using a single questionnaire. Although common method bias was shown not to be an issue, in future research different variables should be measured with different methods. For instance, using the items by Liñán and Chen (2009) which were developed in the United States of America, to measure SE European students' entrepreneurial perceived behavioral control might ignore some requisite resources or abilities typical for SE European students, such as personal relational network (similar to the notion of guanxi in China (see, e.g. Hwang et al., 2009). Second, Busenitz et al. (2000) indicate that cross-national differences in entrepreneurship are best explained by a broader set of institutions, i.e. educational and governmental support agencies. In general, the empirical evidence on the relationship between national culture and entrepreneurial behavior is mixed and this is generally agreed that an important issue that needs to be considered is the interactions between cultural values, social institutions, industry characteristics and outcomes such as entrepreneurship (Hayton et al., 2002). In the future, similar studies could include respondents with a larger dispersion of prior education, age, and human, social and financial capital.

The existence of support received in the family environment and the lack of individualistic and competitive aspirations create a more favorable environment for a young person to become entrepreneur. This must be taken seriously into account by educators and policy makers aiming at encouraging entrepreneurship, because in the societies studied here the motivation of prospective entrepreneurs depends on totally different drivers than those usually encountered in the Western world. Furthermore, from a gender perspective, the authors' study suggests that in societies with stronger family ties and more gender discrimination, an individual's closer social environment may not create the appropriate context for women to decide to become entrepreneurs.

A strong hierarchical culture in a society goes against the intention of becoming an entrepreneur. That is, when people accept that social mobility is low and, thus, reversing people's relative positions in the society is unlikely, people are less prone to becoming entrepreneurs. In Western societies, where collectivism is low, the contrary holds. In the societies considered here, where family and social links are strong, entrepreneurship is considered to be a rather safer option, which is encouraged by non-individualistic values and is negatively associated with aggressive competitiveness. In those societies, formal institutions such as the government and the educational sector could play an important role to support prospective female entrepreneurs (Borges et al., 2021).

The motivation of prospective entrepreneurs in SE European countries depends on totally different drivers than those usually encountered in the Western world.

The objective of the study is to evaluate the impact of social affinity on the strategic choices made by economic agents using the framework of Ultimatum Game. Conventional theory underpinning the Ultimatum Game predicts the complete absence of altruistic behaviour wherein the agents are expected to maximise individual monetary payoffs of the agents. The authors' experimental findings disprove this assumption of purely self-interested behaviour of the agents as proposed by orthodox neo-classical utility maximisation model.

The final outcome of the Ultimatum Game is mutually dependent on the agent's strategic choices, i.e. the proposer's altruistic concern towards the responder and their expectation of altruistic concern by the responder. In this study, the authors evaluate the participant's strategic choice under three levels of partner selection arrangements – (1) stranger, (2) face-to-face interface with a peer and (3) friend.

From the experimental results, the authors found that the proposers reflected greater degree of altruism towards proposers' partners and also expected greater degree of altruism to be reciprocated by proposers' partners. The proposers were voluntarily willing to offer fair share to proposers' socially close partners and also increasingly expected that the proposers would be willing to accept unfair offers.

The study stresses that the ignorance of the human capacity for altruism runs the serious risk of legitimising narrow-minded selfishness and failure in recognising the capacity for public spiritedness which can distort the range and choice of optimum policy prescriptions. This requires policy makers to adopt a more holistic and less-pessimistic view of human nature.

The authors study offers a novel experimental framework that provides insights on how increase in social affinity can influence both altruistic behaviour and altruistic expectations of the participants, highlighting the inadequacy of the neo-classical maximisation hypothesis predicated on all agents.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2022-0481.