| By: |
Cristina Blanco-Perez (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON);
Abel Brodeur (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa) |
| Abstract: |
In February 2015, the editors of eight health economics journals sent out an
editorial statement which aims to reduce the extent of specification searching
and reminds referees to accept studies that: “have potential scientific and
publication merit regardless of whether such studies' empirical findings do or
do not reject null hypotheses". Guided by a pre-analysis, we test whether the
editorial statement decreased the extent of publication bias. Our
differences-in-differences estimates suggest that the statement decreased the
proportion of tests rejecting the null hypothesis by 18 percentage points. Our
findings suggest that incentives may be aligned to promote more transparent
research. |
| Keywords: |
Publication bias, specification searching, pre-analysis plan, research in economics, incentives to publish. |
| JEL: |
A11 C13 C44 I10 |
| Date: |
2019 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ott:wpaper:1907e&r=all |