| Abstract: |
In economics many articles are subjected to multiple rounds of refereeing at
the same journal, which generates time costs of referees alone of at least $50
million. This process leads to remarkably longer publication lags than in
other social sciences. We examine whether repeated refereeing produces any
benefits, using an experiment at one journal that allows authors to submit
under an accept/reject (fast-track or not) or the usual regime. We evaluate
the scholarly impacts of articles by their subsequent citation histories,
holding constant their sub-fields, authors’ demographics and prior citations,
and other characteristics. There is no payoff to refereeing beyond the first
round and no difference between accept/reject articles and others. This result
holds accounting for authors’ selectivity into the two regimes, which we model
formally to generate an empirical selection equation. This latter is used to
provide instrumental estimates of the effect of each regime on scholarly
impact. |