Economic Inquiry Call for Papers

Reproducibility and replicability are vital to science as it helps make science a self-correcting system, allowing to assess the reliability and validity of empirical results. Replication can lead to improved credibility within empirical economic research, which represents a key input in economic policy design. While there has been significant prior work looking at replication of experimental studies, there has not been as much focus on careful replication of non-experimental studies. The objective of this special issue is to draw further attention to the importance of replication of empirical work with a focus on non-experimental studies though we also invite replications on experimental studies as well.

For non-experimental studies we encourage papers which critically reconsider prior work. This could involve recoding a previous study including starting over with original raw data, testing the robustness of the prior results to reasonable alternative methods of analysis or combinations of these approaches. We would also encourage meta-replications which cover multiple studies using a specific methodology as well as other types of studies which advance the methodology of replication science. Stronger weight will be given to replications of important, recent work in leading journals and studies whose results help us better understand any issues in the underlying research questions.

In addition to empirical replication studies, we are also interested in publishing papers addressing questions about the limitations of replication; what value replication holds for scientific inquiry and how replication can promote our understanding of the range of validity of experimental results. Last, we also encourage theoretical papers that consider incentives, norms and ethics that can guide the practice of replication.

We are pleased to invite researchers to submit their papers on these or related topics for consideration to a special issue of Economic Inquiry. This special issue is in collaboration with the Institute for Replication. The guest editors in charge of this symposium are Abel Brodeur (abrodeur@uottawa.ca), Michalis Drouvelis (m.drouvelis@bham.ac.uk) and Farasat Bokhari (F.Bokhari@uea.ac.uk). The submission deadline is January 31, 2024. Interested authors should submit their papers through Economic Inquiry's ScholarOne portal. In Step 3 of the submission process, select "On the Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics’ as the Special Issue and also indicate in the cover letter that the manuscript should be considered for the special issue titled “On the Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics”.