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Economics experiments are actually a thing. You can have natural experiments, or you can uncover patterns in data, or you can try controlled experiments (in microeconomics), though that sometimes just feels like applied psychology. I dunno, I've never formally studied it.

But I have read NBER papers, and can confirm that there is real research. It's not a hard science, but among the social sciences it's pretty rigorous, and often very quantitative. I know how this crowd likes it quantitative.

Many economic concepts are part of our daily life. Supply and demand, comparative advantage, for example.

Multiple experiments are conducted using historic data, for example the 2024 Nobel.

I would like to note that there are many other fields in science which have even more trouble performing experiments, but nobody says that e.g. astrophysics or astronomy is not a science.