Do economists replicate?

Nathan Fiala, Florian Neubauer and Jörg Peters

No 939, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: Reanalyses of empirical studies and replications in new contexts are important for scientific progress. Journals in economics increasingly require authors to provide data and code alongside published papers, but how much does the economics profession indeed replicate? This paper summarizes existing replication definitions and reviews how much economists replicate other scholars' work. We argue that in order to counter incentive problems potentially leading to a replication crisis, replications in the spirit of Merton's 'organized skepticism' are needed - what we call 'policing replications'. We review leading economics journals to show that policing replications are rare and conclude that more incentives to replicate are needed to reap the fruits of rising transparency standards.

Keywords: Replication; research transparency; generalizability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 C18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-sog
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Do economists replicate? (2023)
Working Paper: Do Economists Replicate? (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:939

DOI: 10.4419/96973100

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