| Abstract: |
Novel empirical insights by their very nature tend to be unanticipated, and in
some cases at odds with the current state of knowledge on the topic. The
mechanics of statistical inference suggest that such initial findings, even
when robust and statistically significant within the study, should not
appreciably move priors about the phenomenon under investigation. Yet, a few
well-conceived independent replications dramatically improve the reliability
of novel findings. Nevertheless, the incentives to replicate are seldom in
place in the sciences, especially within the social sciences. We propose a
simple incentive-compatible mechanism to promote replications, and use
experimental economics to highlight our approach. We begin by reporting
results from an experiment in which we investigate how cooperation in
allocation games is affected by the presence of Knightian uncertainty
(ambiguity), a pervasive and yet unexplored characteristic of most public
goods. Unexpectedly, we find that adding uncertainty enhances cooperation.
This surprising result serves as a test case for our mechanism: instead of
sending this paper to a peer-reviewed journal, we make it available online as
a working paper, but we commit never to submit it to a journal for
publication. We instead offered co-authorship for a second, yet to be written,
paper to other scholars willing to independently replicate our study. That
second paper will reference this working paper, will include all replications,
and will be submitted to a peer- reviewed journal for publication. Our
mechanism allows mutually-beneficial gains from trade between the original
investigators and other scholars, alleviates the publication bias problem that
often surrounds novel experimental results, and accelerates the advancement of
economic science by leveraging the mechanics of statistical inference. |