NOTE: This entry is based on the paper, â The Economics of Replicationâ Replication studies are considered a hallmark of good scientific practice (1). Yet they are treated among researchers as an ideal to be professed but not practised (2, 3). For science policy makers, journal editors and external research funders to design favourable boundary conditions, it is therefore necessary to understand what drives replication.
Economics has become an empirical discipline. Applied econometrics has replaced mathematical economics in all but a few niche journals, and economists are collecting primary data again. But publication practices are lagging behind. Replication of a theoretical paper has never been an issue. You get out your pencil and paper and work through the proof of this or that theorem.
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.