IMEEL is an initiative of the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division (MTID) of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Its primary objective is to implement economics experiments in the field to better understand the behavior of smallholders and the poor in rural areas, especially in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Because it is a mobile laboratory, IMEEL will enable researchers to study the behavior of individuals and groups who are generally difficult to reach due to their inability to travel to urban areas to participate in experiments.
Experimental economics methods are becoming commonplace in the design of economic policy. Experiments—which are different from surveys in that they use simple games to observe people's actual decisions—not only complement traditional field studies but also have a number of additional advantages. First, the experimental approach allows researchers to have a relatively high degree of control over the manner in which data are generated. This enables them to study the economic question of interest more precisely by isolating the effects of alternative institutions and incentives on individual behavior. Second, since experiments usually test behavior under stylized mechanisms, they can be adapted relatively easily from one setting to another. In particular, their results can enable researchers to propose mechanisms across a broad range of conditions. IMEEL will primarily focus on field experiments. As opposed to laboratory experiments, field experiments are applied in more general (non-academic) settings.