This instalment follows on yesterday’s post where I addressed two questions: Are there more replications in economics than there used to be? And, Which journals publish replications? These questions deal with the descriptive aspect of replications. We saw that replications seemingly constitute a relatively small — arguably negligible – component of the empirical output of economists.
This post is based on a keynote presentation I gave at the Editor’s Meeting of the International Journal for Re-Views of Empirical Economics in June 2020. It loosely follows up two previous attempts to summarize the state of replications in economics: (i) An initial paper by Maren Duvendack, Richard Palmer-Jones, and myself entitled “ Replications in Economics: A Progress Report”, published in Econ Journal Watch in 2015; and (ii) a blog I wrote for The Replication Network (TRN) entitled “ An Update on the Progress of Replications in Economics”, posted in October 2018.
IREE ( the International Journal for Re-Views in Empirical Economics) was launched in September 2017, supported by our prestigious board of academic advisors: Sir Angus Deaton, Richard Easterlin, and Jeffrey Wooldridge. It is the first, and, to date, only journal solely dedicated to publishing replication studies in Economics. As we take stock of where we currently are, I want to take this opportunity to provide an update, and to talk about four areas that will be crucial for IREE’s growth in the future: financing, publications, submissions, and the editorial board.
Replications are pivotal for the credibility of empirical economics. Evidence-based policy requires findings that are robust and reproducible. Despite this, there has been a notable absence of serious effort to establish the reliability of empirical research in economics. As Edward Leamer famously noted, “Hardly anyone takes data analysis seriously. Or perhaps more accurately, hardly anyone takes anyone else’s data analysis seriously.
Science is a community of human beings of the homo sapiens species: bipedals with the capacity to be self-reflexive. This implies that science as a community is subject to all the same behavioral patterns that all human communities are, including a plethora of biases at both the individual and collective level.