Discovering Economics in the Classroom with Experimental Economics and the Scottish Enlightenment*

This paper describes a curriculum for teaching economics using laboratory experiments. The key features of the curriculum are the low technology barriers, complete instructions for running the experiment and debriefing the results, and a guide for teacher-led roundtable discussions motivated by the Scottish philosophers. Our main goal is to present economic principles to young students in a way that is both exciting and accessible, while emphasizing the discovery process underlying wealth creation in modern economies using laboratory experiments.