Experiment Versus Simulation in Economics

Similarly to many other fields of science that are today inseparably associated with experiments, for many years economics has been regarded as the science where experimental methods cannot be used. And even though the number of economic experiments is growing year by year, it is impossible to perform experiments on the economy as a whole. What is more, many economic phenomena cannot be subject to experimental manipulation due to practical, ethical or technological reasons. In such cases it is the computer simulation that can help economics reach the status of a fully fledged experimental science. But does the epistemological value of a computer simulation equal that of a traditional economics experiment? The purpose of this article is to attempt to answer this question.