Category: GUEST BLOGS


EBERHARDT: Revisiting the Causal Effect of Democracy on Long-run Development

[This Guest Blog is a repost of a blog by Markus Eberhardt, published at Vox – CEPR Policy Portal] Recent evidence suggests that a country switching to democracy achieves about 20% higher per capita GDP over subsequent decades. This column…

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GOODMAN: Your p-Values Are Too Small! And So Are Your Confidence Intervals!

An oft-overlooked detail in the significance debate is the challenge of calculating correct p-values and confidence intervals, the favored statistics of the two sides. Standard methods rely on assumptions about how the data were generated and can be way off…

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BÉDÉCARRATS et al.: Lessons from Replicating an RCT

In 2015, Crépon, Devoto, Duflo and Pariente (2015, henceforth CDDP), published the results of a randomized control trial (RCT) in a special issue of the AEJ: Applied Economics. CDDP evaluated the impact of a microcredit program conducted in Morocco with…

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HIRSCHAUER et al.: Twenty Steps Towards an Adequate Inferential Interpretation of p-Values in Econometrics

This blog is based on the homonymous paper by Norbert Hirschauer, Sven Grüner, Oliver Mußhoff, and Claudia Becker in the Journal of Economics and Statistics. It is motivated by prevalent inferential errors and the intensifying debate on p-values – as…

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REED: Replications in Economics are Different from Replications in Psychology, and Other Thoughts

In July 2017, Economics: The Open Access, Open Assessment E-Journal issued a call for papers for a special issue on the practice of replication. The call stated, “This special issue is designed to highlight alternative approaches to doing replications, while…

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GOODMAN: When You’re Selecting Significant Findings, You’re Selecting Inflated Estimates

Replication researchers cite inflated effect sizes as a major cause of replication failure. It turns out this is an inevitable consequence of significance testing. The reason is simple. The p-value you get from a study depends on the observed effect…

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MILLER: The Statistical Fundamentals of (Non-)Replicability

“Replicability of findings is at the heart of any empirical science” (Asendorpf, Conner, De Fruyt, et al., 2013, p. 108) The idea that scientific results should be reliably demonstrable under controlled circumstances has a special status in science.  In contrast…

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BROWN: Is the Evidence We Use in International Development Verifiable? Push Button Replication Provides the Answer

[This post is cross-published on FHI 360’s R&E Search for Evidence blog] There are many debates about the definitions and distinctions for replication research, particularly for internal replication research, which is conducted using the original dataset from an article or study. The…

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GOODMAN: Hold the Bus!

A recent news piece in Nature reported in glowing terms on the “first analysis of ‘pre-registered’ studies”, stating that “[pre-registration] seems to work as intended: to reduce publication bias for positive results.” There are reasons to be somewhat dubious about…

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ROODMAN: Hookworms and Malaria and Replications, Oh My!

About 10 years ago, the economist Hoyt Bleakley published two important papers on the impact of health on wealth—more precisely, on the long-term economic impacts of large-scale disease eradication campaigns. In the Quarterly Journal of Economics, “Disease and Development: Evidence…

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