
A natural experiment is an empirical study in which individuals (or clusters of individuals) exposed to the experimental and control conditions are determined by nature or by other factors outside the control of the investigators, yet the process governing the exposures arguably resembles random assignment. Thus, natural experiments are observatio...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment

If economists could experiment they could test some theories more quickly and thoroughly than is now possible. Sometimes an isolated change occurs in one aspect of the economic environment and economists can study the effects of that change as if it were an experiment; that is, by assuming that every other exogenous input was held constant. An inte...
Found on
http://www.econterms.com/glossary.cgi?query=natural+experiment
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