Insignificant Results

There is considerable concern among scholars that empirical papers face a drastically smaller chance of being published if the results looking to confirm an established theory turn out to be statistically insignificant. Such a publication bias can provide a wrong picture of economic magnitudes and mechanisms. Against this background, the journal FinanzArchiv/Public Finance Analysis recently posted a call for papers for a special issue on “Insignificant Results in Public Finance”.

It is well known that there is a bias towards publication of statistically significant results. In fact, we have known this for at least 25 years since the publication of De Long and Lang (JPE 1992): “Economics articles are sprinkled with very low t-statistics – marginal significance levels very close to one – on nuisance coefficients.