The Virtual Laboratory Infrastructure for Controlled Online Economic Experiments

The goal of this paper is to provide an overview on the Virtual Laboratory infrastructure for controlled online experiments in economics. We summarize our experience gained from per- forming several economic experiments on the Internet. The experiments we have run range from electronic markets to individual decision making. From there we synthesize and evaluate the methodological issue of experimental control in performing economic experiments on the Internet. The paper discusses IT-based solutions to maximize control over subjects and the envi- ronment when conducting experiments online. As a result for further exploration we sketch the design of an infrastructure that allows the automated execution of Internet experiments including marketing of experiments, control of application and participation, payment system integration, and evaluation of results.