The Research network on Economic Experiments for the Common Agricultural Policy (REECAP) is an EU-wide informal consortium with the aim to promote and foster economic experimental designs and behavioural analysis in the context of evaluating European agricultural policies.

The network previously organised a roundtable discussion entitled “Reproducibility in Experimental Economics: Crisis or Opportunity?” (see this blog for a nice summary) as part of their annual event in Osnabrueck, Germany. The discussion acknowledged that the principle of reproducibility is a central tenet of experimental research to inform policy relevant decisions in the environmental and agricultural spheres. However, recent studies (e.g. Camerer et al 2018) cast doubts about the replicability of social science experiments, going as far as to say that the social sciences may experience a ‘replication crisis’.

This is the backdrop to the webinar REECAP is offering on October 19, 2020 from 10.30-12.30am CET, details of the programme can be found here. The webinar aims to discuss replications in agricultural economics, and it is of interest to researchers who wish to learn about the ‘replication crisis’, where it comes from and what has been done to tackle it so far. This event will also provide a forum for those interested in exploring participation in REECAP’s replication project that is aiming to coordinate the replication of experiments relevant for shaping agricultural policies.

These replications may then be submitted to a Special Issue in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy – a call is forthcoming. However, this webinar is not just targeting researchers but also practitioners who may have an interest in research methodologies and who are curious to learn more about how best to improve the robustness of research findings, especially when these findings are used to inform policy relevant decisions in the context of agriculture.