ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the experimental method and its application to contract law and contract law & economics. With its roots in psychology and its expansion in economics, experiments evolved to identify causal relationships in highly controlled environments, but they are also capable of providing empirical evidence on people’s perceptions, opinions, and reactions when confronted with paradigmatic contractual cases. This chapter explores how scenario and vignette studies, laboratory experiments, and field experiments are used to shed light on important questions for contract law that demand empirical, and not only theoretical, analysis. More precisely, it explains the experimental evidence we have so far on (i) whether contract law converges or diverges from people’s moral intuitions, (ii) how contractual parties behave in responses to different types of contractual clauses, (iii) the effect of different remedies for breach on parties’ decision to invest and to perform, and (iv) why people keep promises and contracts. It concludes by exploring avenues for future research in the area.
Mittlaender, Sergio, The Experimental Method in the Study of Contract Law (March 15, 2024), Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy Research Paper No 2024-7.
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