Florian Neubauer and Jörg Ankel-Peters
Where Have All the Comments Gone?
The figure below has been with us for several years now. It tracks how often the American Economic Review (AER) publishes formal comments, i.e., papers that reassess, replicate, or challenge previously published AER articles,and it shows a pronounced decline over time. We first published an earlier version of that figure in a paper that appeared in Economic Inquiry, studying the role of comments in the AER (Ankel-Peters et al. 2025). In that piece, we examined whether such comments have any effect on how those original AER articles are cited. They do not.
At the time the Economic Inquiry article came out, our data ran through 2020. We have now updated the figure to check what happened after 2020. We see that the decline has continued, down to zero published comments in 2024, and one published comment in 2025.
A Stable Number of Papers, a Shrinking Space for Critique?
The black line in the figure shows the total number of papers published in the AER each year from 1980 to 2025. Except for the dip in the 1990s, this number has remained relatively consistent, hovering between 100 and 120 papers per year, with some moderate fluctuations. There is no long-run decline in publication volume and no obvious capacity constraint that would force trade-offs between article types.
The blue line tells a very different story. It shows the share of comments of published papers.
Apparently, throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s, comments were a routine part of the journal. More than 10 percent of all AER publications took the form of comments – formal critiques, replications, or corrections of previously published work. In our Economic Inquiry paper, we documented that this share has declined considerably over time, down to 2-3 percent in the late 2010s. At the same time, the character of comments has shifted: In the 1980s, only about 20-50 percent of comments were empirical, whereas in recent years virtually all comments have been empirical, in some years even all comments. This indicates that post-publication discussion increasingly took the form of data- and evidence-based scrutiny rather than purely conceptual debate.
The updated data now show that the decline has continued – despite the increased awareness of the necessity for replications and broader discussions about a potential credibility crisis in the social sciences. Notably, the AER itself has published some of the most influential recent evidence on these issues, with studies documenting p-hacking and publication bias in economics research (Brodeur et al. 2020, 2023).
We still know very little about why the number of comments declined. In our Economic Inquiry article, we asked all AER editors since 1985 for potential editorial explanations. None reported any explicit policy change regarding comments. Their reflections instead pointed to a range of possibilities: refereeing comments can be tedious; today, comments may carry less weight in hiring and tenure decisions; authors may prefer writing new papers rather than debating existing ones; and longer, more comprehensive articles may simply offer less room for critique. Taken together, these responses suggest that according to the AER editors there is no demand problem, that is, the space to voice criticism has not been purposefully restricted editorially.
The Decline of Comments: A Supply or Demand Problem?
So, is a decline of supply driving the decline, because fewer comments are being written and submitted? The answer isn’t obvious. A fuller understanding would require looking at both the supply side, i.e., why economists choose (or choose not) to write comments, and the editorial (demand) side. Our point here is to emphasize that a better understanding of these forces behind this decline is very important, and it opens avenues for future research.
One empirical approach would be to engage more deeply with the journal’s editorial team than we did in our light-touch editor survey. Editors could provide data on submission volumes, acceptance rates, and even anonymized referee reports and rejection letters, shedding light on whether the decline reflects a drop in submissions or a stricter editorial stance. Another complementary approach would be to survey economists more broadly. Such a survey could explore why researchers choose, or choose not, to write comments, what incentives and barriers they face, and how they perceive the value of publishing formal critiques.
Together, these approaches could help distinguish between changes in author behavior and changes in editorial policy, providing a clearer picture of the mechanisms behind the shrinking space for critique in the AER.
For now, the figure mostly raises the question: is the decline a story about what economists produce, or about what journals choose to publish? Either way, it reminds us that a once-visible culture of formalized critique is quietly shrinking – and that there is more to understand about why.
References:
Ankel‐Peters, J., Fiala, N. and Neubauer, F., 2025. Is economics self‐correcting? Replications in the American Economic Review. Economic Inquiry, 63(2), pp.463-485.
Brodeur, A., Carrell, S., Figlio, D., & Lusher, L. (2023). Unpacking p-hacking and publication bias. American Economic Review, 113(11), 2974-3002.
Brodeur, A., Cook, N., & Heyes, A. (2020). Methods matter: P-hacking and publication bias in causal analysis in economics. American Economic Review, 110(11), 3634-3660.