research studies about economics

General principles

Repec services, additional websites using repec.

• RePEc help / FAQ
• Getting material into RePEc
• Contributing archives
• RePEc history

Quick links

• MPRA : Munich Personal RePEc Archive
• EconPapers |   IDEAS : working papers
• EconPapers |   IDEAS : articles
• EconPapers |   IDEAS : books
• EconPapers |   IDEAS : book chapters
• EconPapers |   IDEAS : software components
• EconPapers |   IDEAS : authors
• EDIRC : Economics institutions

How RePEc operates:

Every publisher or provider puts text files describing their publications on their own server. These files follow a simple but rigorous machine-readable syntax. They are then automatically mirrored and made available to the public on the various RePEc websites. Some RePEc services complement these data with additional information such as citations or author details. RePEc is thus a facilitator that organizes the data for others to use.

How you can use RePEc as a provider or publisher:

Join over 2000 providers and publishers to increase the visibility of your publications. Follow these step-by-step instructions to create your RePEc archive. They show how to quickly set up your RePEc archive on your http, https, or ftp server and describe the syntax of the required metadata for working papers, journal articles, books, chapters, and software. For the complete technical details on the infrastructure and the metadata, you can also read about the Guildford Protocol and ReDIF , the Research Documents Information Format.

How you can use RePEc as a reader:

You can explore economic literature on two RePEc services. On EconPapers and IDEAS , search and browse, or follow links to author profiles, references, citations, keywords, or classifications. You can get notifications of new material with two other RePEc services, NEP and MyIDEAS .

How you can use RePEc as an author:

With the RePEc Author Service , you can create a profile of your indexed works. This allows the other RePEc services to link your profile to your works and vice versa. You also get notifications about the visibility of your works and citations newly found by CitEc . And if your publisher does not participate in RePEc, you can upload missing items to MPRA , copyright permitting.

How you can use RePEc as an institution:

RePEc can help you make your working papers (pre-prints) more visible, track how your researchers publish, and provide metrics to evaluate impact.

How you can leverage RePEc data as a researcher:

Data assembled by RePEc can be used for many purposes. Examples are academic research, tracking how working papers get published, adding metrics to a website, and evaluating researchers or institutions. We have instructions on how to access the data, including through an API.

There is much more that RePEc can do for you. Below is a list of all the RePEc services:

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		Authors in institutions lacking a participating RePEc archive can submit their papers to MPRA and get them included in the RePEc database.
		Author registration and maintenance of a profile on RePEc.
		The complete RePEc database at your disposal. Browse or search it all.
		Economics at your fingertips. EconPapers provides access to all of RePEc. Browsing and searching available.
		Directory of Economics institutions, with links to their members and publications listed on RePEc
		New Economics Papers is a free email, RSS and Twitter/X notification service for new downloadable working papers from over 90 specific fields. Archives are also available.
		Academic family tree for economics.
		Detailed download and access statistics for RePEc items and authors.
		Citation analysis from items in the RePEc database.
		Rankings by co-authorship centrality for authors registered in the RePEc Author Service.
		Hand-selected bibliography of articles and papers in economics.
		Blog aggregator for discussion about economics research.
	Service to annotate RePEc papers in PDF and establish scientific relationships between papers.
		An effort to curtail plagiarism of RePEc contents.

• Google Scholar
• Microsoft Academic Search
• OAISter/WORLDCAT
• ResearchGate

Adding bibliographic information to RePEc

If you intend to contribute information about your publications to RePEc, you may read the above documents or use these step-by-step instructions or sample templates . The same instructions apply for commercial publishers or research institutes.

RePEc archive maintainers may also make good use of the template syntax and link checker , of tips and tricks and the FAQ .

RePEc emerged from the NetEc group , created in 1992, which received support for its WoPEc project between 1996-1999 by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK Higher Education Funding Councils, as part of its Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib). RePEc was created in June 1997 to decentralize the work done by WoPEc and thus make it independent of grant needs. RePEc is then guaranteed to remain free for all parties.

Economic Studies

The Brookings Economic Studies program provides analysis of current and emerging economic issues to promote innovative and practical policy solutions.

• About Economic Studies
• Experts and staff
• Explore research and commentary

The Brookings Economic Studies program provides analysis of current and emerging economic issues to promote innovative and practical policy solutions. Economic Studies scholars conduct rigorous research and policy analysis and communicate their findings to inform policymakers and the public in the areas of broad-based economic growth, economic opportunity and mobility, inclusive social policy, sound monetary and fiscal policy, and climate-resilient growth.

Latest research and commentary

Michael Navarrete

September 9, 2024

The Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.

10:00 am - 11:00 am EDT

Comfort Oshagbemi, Louise Sheiner

September 5, 2024

Online only

10:30 am - 12:00 pm EDT

The energy transition and workforce development in the US

1:00 pm - 3:30 pm EDT

View all upcoming Economic Studies events >>

Featured experts

In the news.

Ben Harris joins CNBC Squawk Box to discuss Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic agenda and her speech laying out plans to tackle price gouging and the U.S. housing shortage.

David Wessel joins PBS Newshour to discuss recent turbulence in the U.S. stock market, the significance of the Bank of Japan’s rate hike, and renewed fears of an economic slowdown.

David Wessel

Richard Frank speaks with Barron’s about the Medicare drug-price negotiation process, and how companies could try to make their drugs exempt.

Richard G. Frank

Lauren Bauer speaks with the New York Times about how a lack of affordable and available child care services could keep mothers from joining the workforce.

Lauren Bauer

Ben Harris lays out the economic policy priorities that Vice President Kamala Harris is most likely to advocate as she campaigns for president.

Research by Ben Harris and Robin Brooks on tightening sanctions on Russia’s oil fleet is cited in a story about the Treasury Department’s interest in new penalties.

David Wessel speaks with NPR Morning Edition about former President Donald Trump’s economic proposals, including extensions of his 2017 tax cuts and new tariffs.

A cooling economy “would reinforce their story that (interest rate) policy is restrictive.”

Donald Kohn

Wendy Edelberg discusses the near-term economic impact of President Biden’s border policies with Politico.

Wendy Edelberg

Ben Harris joins Yahoo! Finance to discuss the Federal Reserve’s battle against inflation, and how the Fed’s credibility could have a bad influence on consumer behavior.

Brookings Papers on Economic Activity

The Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) is a semi-annual academic conference and journal that pairs rigorous research with real-time policy analysis to address the most urgent economic challenges of the day.

1:00 pm - 12:45 pm EDT

Samuel G. Hanson, Victoria Ivashina, Laura Nicolae, Jeremy C. Stein, Adi Sunderam, Daniel K. Tarullo

March 27, 2024

Stefanie Stantcheva

Andrew Atkeson, Stephen Kissler

Economic Studies Bulletin Weekly

An update with the latest research on taxes, business, health, and social policy from the Economic Studies program at Brookings.

Hutchins Roundup and Newsletter Weekly

New research on fiscal and monetary policy, along with periodic updates from the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy.

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An update from the Center on Health Policy at Brookings.

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A newsletter that explores the most challenging U.S. social policy questions.

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An update on important regulatory actions taken by the U.S. federal government.

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Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity 21 Episodes 4 Seasons

The Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity connects you to cutting edge economic policy research and the renowned economists who create it. Each episode features an…

Recession Remedies Podcast 11 Episodes Limited Series

Recession Remedies focused on the economic policy response to COVID-19 and lessons for future recessions. Expert guests joined host David Wessel, director of the Hutchins…

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo sympathizes with students who have no interest in her field. She was such a student herself — until an undergraduate research post gave her the chance to learn first-hand that economists address many of the major issues facing human and planetary well-being. “Most people have a wrong view of what economics is. They just see economists on television discussing what’s going to happen to the stock market,” says Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics. “But what people do in the field is very broad. Economists grapple with the real world and with the complexity that goes with it.”

That’s why this year Duflo has teamed up with Professor Abhijit Banerjee to offer 14.009 (Economics and Society’s Greatest Problems), a first-year discovery subject — a class type designed to give undergraduates a low-pressure, high-impact way to explore a field. In this case, they are exploring the range of issues that economists engage with every day: the economic dimensions of climate change, international trade, racism, justice, education, poverty, health care, social preferences, and economic growth are just a few of the topics the class covers. “We think it’s pretty important that the first exposure to economics is via issues,” Duflo says. “If you first get exposed to economics via models, these models necessarily have to be very simplified, and then students get the idea that economics is a simplistic view of the world that can’t explain much.” Arguably, Duflo and Banerjee have been disproving that view throughout their careers. In 2003, the pair founded MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a leading antipoverty research network that provides scientific evidence on what methods actually work to alleviate poverty — which enables governments and nongovernmental organizations to implement truly effective programs and social policies. And, in 2019 they won the Nobel Prize in economics (together with Michael Kremer of the University of Chicago) for their innovative work applying laboratory-style randomized, controlled trials to research a wide range of topics implicated in global poverty. “Super cool”

First-year Jean Billa, one of the students in 14.009, says, “Economics isn’t just about how money flows, but about how people react to certain events. That was an interesting discovery for me.”

It’s also precisely the lesson Banerjee and Duflo hoped students would take away from 14.009, a class that centers on weekly in-person discussions of the professors’ recorded lectures — many of which align with chapters in Banerjee and Duflo’s book “Good Economics for Hard Times” (Public Affairs, 2019). Classes typically start with a poll in which the roughly 100 enrolled students can register their views on that week’s topic. Then, students get to discuss the issue, says senior Dina Atia, teaching assistant for the class. Noting that she finds it “super cool” that Nobelists are teaching MIT’s first-year students, Atia points out that both Duflo and Banerjee have also made themselves available to chat with students after class. “They’re definitely extending themselves,” she says. “We want the students to get excited about economics so they want to know more,” says Banerjee, the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, “because this is a field that can help us address some of the biggest problems society faces.”   Using natural experiments to test theories

Early in the term, for example, the topic was migration. In the lecture, Duflo points out that migration policies are often impacted by the fear that unskilled migrants will overwhelm a region, taking jobs from residents and demanding social services. Yet, migrant flows in normal years represent just 3 percent of the world population. “There is no flood. There is no vast movement of migrants,” she says. Duflo then explains that economists were able to learn a lot about migration thanks to a “natural experiment,” the Mariel boat lift. This 1980 event brought roughly 125,000 unskilled Cubans to Florida over a matter a months, enabling economists to study the impacts of a sudden wave of migration. Duflo says a look at real wages before and after the migration showed no significant impacts. “It was interesting to see that most theories about immigrants were not justified,” Billa says. “That was a real-life situation, and the results showed that even a massive wave of immigration didn’t change work in the city [Miami].”

Question assumptions, find the facts in data Since this is a broad survey course, there is always more to unpack. The goal, faculty say, is simply to help students understand the power of economics to explain and shape the world. “We are going so fast from topic to topic, I don’t expect them to retain all the information,” Duflo says. Instead, students are expected to gain an appreciation for a way of thinking. “Economics is about questioning everything — questioning assumptions you don’t even know are assumptions and being sophisticated about looking at data to uncover the facts.” To add impact, Duflo says she and Banerjee tie lessons to current events and dive more deeply into a few economic studies. One class, for example, focused on the unequal burden the Covid-19 pandemic has placed on different demographic groups and referenced research by Harvard University professor Marcella Alsan, who won a MacArthur Fellowship this fall for her work studying the impact of racism on health disparities.

Duflo also revealed that at the beginning of the pandemic, she suspected that mistrust of the health-care system could prevent Black Americans from taking certain measures to protect themselves from the virus. What she discovered when she researched the topic, however, was that political considerations outweighed racial influences as a predictor of behavior. “The lesson for you is, it’s good to question your assumptions,” she told the class. “Students should ideally understand, by the end of class, why it’s important to ask questions and what they can teach us about the effectiveness of policy and economic theory,” Banerjee says. “We want people to discover the range of economics and to understand how economists look at problems.”

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Prof. Esther Duflo will present her research on poverty reduction and her “proposal for a global minimum tax on billionaires and increased corporate levies to G-20 finance chiefs,” reports Andrew Rosati for Bloomberg. “The plan calls for redistributing the revenues to low- and middle-income nations to compensate for lives lost due to a warming planet,” writes Rosati. “It also adds to growing calls to raise taxes on the world’s wealthiest to help its most needy.”

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Methods Used in Economic Research: An Empirical Study of Trends and Levels

The methods used in economic research are analyzed on a sample of all 3,415 regular research papers published in 10 general interest journals every 5th year from 1997 to 2017. The papers are classified into three main groups by method: theory, experiments, and empirics. The theory and empirics groups are almost equally large. Most empiric papers use the classical method, which derives an operational model from theory and runs regressions. The number of papers published increases by 3.3% p.a. Two trends are highly significant: The fraction of theoretical papers has fallen by 26 pp (percentage points), while the fraction of papers using the classical method has increased by 15 pp. Economic theory predicts that such papers exaggerate, and the papers that have been analyzed by meta-analysis confirm the prediction. It is discussed if other methods have smaller problems.

1 Introduction

This paper studies the pattern in the research methods in economics by a sample of 3,415 regular papers published in the years 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017 in 10 journals. The analysis builds on the beliefs that truth exists, but it is difficult to find, and that all the methods listed in the next paragraph have problems as discussed in Sections 2 and 4. Hereby I do not imply that all – or even most – papers have these problems, but we rarely know how serious it is when we read a paper. A key aspect of the problem is that a “perfect” study is very demanding and requires far too much space to report, especially if the paper looks for usable results. Thus, each paper is just one look at an aspect of the problem analyzed. Only when many studies using different methods reach a joint finding, we can trust that it is true.

Section 2 discusses the classification of papers by method into three main categories: (M1) Theory , with three subgroups: (M1.1) economic theory, (M1.2) statistical methods, and (M1.3) surveys. (M2) Experiments , with two subgroups: (M2.1) lab experiments and (M2.2) natural experiments. (M3) Empirics , with three subgroups: (M3.1) descriptive, (M3.2) classical empirics, and (M3.3) newer empirics. More than 90% of the papers are easy to classify, but a stochastic element enters in the classification of the rest. Thus, the study has some – hopefully random – measurement errors.

Section 3 discusses the sample of journals chosen. The choice has been limited by the following main criteria: It should be good journals below the top ten A-journals, i.e., my article covers B-journals, which are the journals where most research economists publish. It should be general interest journals, and the journals should be so different that it is likely that patterns that generalize across these journals apply to more (most?) journals. The Appendix gives some crude counts of researchers, departments, and journals. It assesses that there are about 150 B-level journals, but less than half meet the criteria, so I have selected about 15% of the possible ones. This is the most problematic element in the study. If the reader accepts my choice, the paper tells an interesting story about economic research.

All B-level journals try hard to have a serious refereeing process. If our selection is representative, the 150 journals have increased the annual number of papers published from about 7,500 in 1997 to about 14,000 papers in 2017, giving about 200,000 papers for the period. Thus, the B-level dominates our science. Our sample is about 6% for the years covered, but less than 2% of all papers published in B-journals in the period. However, it is a larger fraction of the papers in general interest journals.

It is impossible for anyone to read more than a small fraction of this flood of papers. Consequently, researchers compete for space in journals and for attention from the readers, as measured in the form of citations. It should be uncontroversial that papers that hold a clear message are easier to publish and get more citations. Thus, an element of sales promotion may enter papers in the form of exaggeration , which is a joint problem for all eight methods. This is in accordance with economic theory that predicts that rational researchers report exaggerated results; see Paldam ( 2016 , 2018 ). For empirical papers, meta-methods exist to summarize the results from many papers, notably papers using regressions. Section 4.4 reports that meta-studies find that exaggeration is common.

The empirical literature surveying the use of research methods is quite small, as I have found two articles only: Hamermesh ( 2013 ) covers 748 articles in 6 years a decade apart studies in three A-journals using a slightly different classification of methods, [1] while my study covers B-journals. Angrist, Azoulay, Ellison, Hill, and Lu ( 2017 ) use a machine-learning classification of 134,000 papers in 80 journals to look at the three main methods. My study subdivide the three categories into eight. The machine-learning algorithm is only sketched, so the paper is difficult to replicate, but it is surely a major effort. A key result in both articles is the strong decrease of theory in economic publications. This finding is confirmed, and it is shown that the corresponding increase in empirical articles is concentrated on the classical method.

I have tried to explain what I have done, so that everything is easy to replicate, in full or for one journal or one year. The coding of each article is available at least for the next five years. I should add that I have been in economic research for half a century. Some of the assessments in the paper will reflect my observations/experience during this period (indicated as my assessments). This especially applies to the judgements expressed in Section 4.

2 The eight categories

Table 1 reports that the annual number of papers in the ten journals has increased 1.9 times, or by 3.3% per year. The Appendix gives the full counts per category, journal, and year. By looking at data over two decades, I study how economic research develops. The increase in the production of papers is caused by two factors: The increase in the number of researchers. The increasing importance of publications for the careers of researchers.

The 3,415 papers

Year	Papers	Fraction	Annual increase
			From	To	In%
1997	464	13.6	1997	2002	2.2
2002	518	15.2	2002	2007	4.0
2007	661	19.4	2007	2012	4.6
2012	881	25.8	2012	2017	0.2
2017	891	26.1
Sum	3,415	100	1997	2017	3.3

2.1 (M1) Theory: subgroups (M1.1) to (M1.3)

Table 2 lists the groups and main numbers discussed in the rest of the paper. Section 2.1 discusses (M1) theory. Section 2.2 covers (M2) experimental methods, while Section 2.3 looks at (M3) empirical methods using statistical inference from data.

The 3,415 papers – fractions in percent

Three main groups		Fraction	Eight subgroups		Fraction
(M1)	Theory	49.6	(M1.1)	Economic theory	45.2
			(M1.2)	Statistical technique, incl. forecasting	2.5
			(M1.3)	Surveys, incl. meta-studies	2.0
(M2)	Experimental	6.4	(M2.1)	Experiments in laboratories	5.7
			(M2.2)	Events, incl. real life experiments	0.7
(M3)	Data inference	43.7	(M3.1)	Descriptive, deductions from data	10.7
			(M3.2)	Classical empirical studies	28.5
			(M3.3)	Newer techniques	4.5

The change of the fractions from 1997 to 2017 in percentage points

Three main groups		Change	Eight subgroups		Change
(M1)	Theory	−24.7	(M1.1)	Economic theory	−25.9
			(M1.2)	Statistical technique, incl. forecasting	2.2
			(M1.3)	Surveys, incl. meta-studies	−1.0
(M2)	Experimental	9.0	(M2.1)	Experiments in laboratories	7.7
			(M2.2)	Events, incl. real life experiments	1.3
(M3)	Data inference	15.8	(M3.1)	Descriptive, deductions from data	2.4
			(M3.2)	Classical empirical studies	15.0
			(M3.3)	Newer techniques	−1.7

Note: Section 3.4 tests if the pattern observed in Table 3 is statistically significant. The Appendix reports the full data.

2.1.1 (M1.1) Economic theory

Papers are where the main content is the development of a theoretical model. The ideal theory paper presents a (simple) new model that recasts the way we look at something important. Such papers are rare and obtain large numbers of citations. Most theoretical papers present variants of known models and obtain few citations.

In a few papers, the analysis is verbal, but more than 95% rely on mathematics, though the technical level differs. Theory papers may start by a descriptive introduction giving the stylized fact the model explains, but the bulk of the paper is the formal analysis, building a model and deriving proofs of some propositions from the model. It is often demonstrated how the model works by a set of simulations, including a calibration made to look realistic. However, the calibrations differ greatly by the efforts made to reach realism. Often, the simulations are in lieu of an analytical solution or just an illustration suggesting the magnitudes of the results reached.

Theoretical papers suffer from the problem known as T-hacking , [2] where the able author by a careful selection of assumptions can tailor the theory to give the results desired. Thus, the proofs made from the model may represent the ability and preferences of the researcher rather than the properties of the economy.

2.1.2 (M1.2) Statistical method

Papers reporting new estimators and tests are published in a handful of specialized journals in econometrics and mathematical statistics – such journals are not included. In our general interest journals, some papers compare estimators on actual data sets. If the demonstration of a methodological improvement is the main feature of the paper, it belongs to (M1.2), but if the economic interpretation is the main point of the paper, it belongs to (M3.2) or (M3.3). [3]

Some papers, including a special issue of Empirical Economics (vol. 53–1), deal with forecasting models. Such models normally have a weak relation to economic theory. They are sometimes justified precisely because of their eclectic nature. They are classified as either (M1.2) or (M3.1), depending upon the focus. It appears that different methods work better on different data sets, and perhaps a trade-off exists between the user-friendliness of the model and the improvement reached.

2.1.3 (M1.3) Surveys

When the literature in a certain field becomes substantial, it normally presents a motley picture with an amazing variation, especially when different schools exist in the field. Thus, a survey is needed, and our sample contains 68 survey articles. They are of two types, where the second type is still rare:

2.1.3.1 (M1.3.1) Assessed surveys

Here, the author reads the papers and assesses what the most reliable results are. Such assessments require judgement that is often quite difficult to distinguish from priors, even for the author of the survey.

2.1.3.2 (M1.3.2) Meta-studies

They are quantitative surveys of estimates of parameters claimed to be the same. Over the two decades from 1997 to 2017, about 500 meta-studies have been made in economics. Our sample includes five, which is 0.15%. [4] Meta-analysis has two levels: The basic level collects and codes the estimates and studies their distribution. This is a rather objective exercise where results seem to replicate rather well. [5] The second level analyzes the variation between the results. This is less objective. The papers analyzed by meta-studies are empirical studies using method (M3.2), though a few use estimates from (M3.1) and (M3.3).

2.2 (M2) Experimental methods: subgroups (M2.1) and (M2.2)

Experiments are of three distinct types, where the last two are rare, so they are lumped together. They are taking place in real life.

2.2.1 (M2.1) Lab experiments

The sample had 1.9% papers using this method in 1997, and it has expanded to 9.7% in 2017. It is a technique that is much easier to apply to micro- than to macroeconomics, so it has spread unequally in the 10 journals, and many experiments are reported in a couple of special journals that are not included in our sample.

Most of these experiments take place in a laboratory, where the subjects communicate with a computer, giving a controlled, but artificial, environment. [6] A number of subjects are told a (more or less abstract) story and paid to react in either of a number of possible ways. A great deal of ingenuity has gone into the construction of such experiments and in the methods used to analyze the results. Lab experiments do allow studies of behavior that are hard to analyze in any other way, and they frequently show sides of human behavior that are difficult to rationalize by economic theory. It appears that such demonstration is a strong argument for the publication of a study.

However, everything is artificial – even the payment. In some cases, the stories told are so elaborate and abstract that framing must be a substantial risk; [7] see Levitt and List ( 2007 ) for a lucid summary, and Bergh and Wichardt ( 2018 ) for a striking example. In addition, experiments cost money, which limits the number of subjects. It is also worth pointing to the difference between expressive and real behavior. It is typically much cheaper for the subject to “express” nice behavior in a lab than to be nice in the real world.

(M2.2) Event studies are studies of real world experiments. They are of two types:

(M2.2.1) Field experiments analyze cases where some people get a certain treatment and others do not. The “gold standard” for such experiments is double blind random sampling, where everything (but the result!) is preannounced; see Christensen and Miguel ( 2018 ). Experiments with humans require permission from the relevant authorities, and the experiment takes time too. In the process, things may happen that compromise the strict rules of the standard. [8] Controlled experiments are expensive, as they require a team of researchers. Our sample of papers contains no study that fulfills the gold standard requirements, but there are a few less stringent studies of real life experiments.

(M2.2.2) Natural experiments take advantage of a discontinuity in the environment, i.e., the period before and after an (unpredicted) change of a law, an earthquake, etc. Methods have been developed to find the effect of the discontinuity. Often, such studies look like (M3.2) classical studies with many controls that may or may not belong. Thus, the problems discussed under (M3.2) will also apply.

2.3 (M3) Empirical methods: subgroups (M3.1) to (M3.3)

The remaining methods are studies making inference from “real” data, which are data samples where the researcher chooses the sample, but has no control over the data generating process.

(M3.1) Descriptive studies are deductive. The researcher describes the data aiming at finding structures that tell a story, which can be interpreted. The findings may call for a formal test. If one clean test follows from the description, [9] the paper is classified under (M3.1). If a more elaborate regression analysis is used, it is classified as (M3.2). Descriptive studies often contain a great deal of theory.

Some descriptive studies present a new data set developed by the author to analyze a debated issue. In these cases, it is often possible to make a clean test, so to the extent that biases sneak in, they are hidden in the details of the assessments made when the data are compiled.

(M3.2) Classical empirics has three steps: It starts by a theory, which is developed into an operational model. Then it presents the data set, and finally it runs regressions.

The significance levels of the t -ratios on the coefficient estimated assume that the regression is the first meeting of the estimation model and the data. We all know that this is rarely the case; see also point (m1) in Section 4.4. In practice, the classical method is often just a presentation technique. The great virtue of the method is that it can be applied to real problems outside academia. The relevance comes with a price: The method is quite flexible as many choices have to be made, and they often give different results. Preferences and interests, as discussed in Sections 4.3 and 4.4 below, notably as point (m2), may affect these choices.

(M3.3) Newer empirics . Partly as a reaction to the problems of (M3.2), the last 3–4 decades have seen a whole set of newer empirical techniques. [10] They include different types of VARs, Bayesian techniques, causality/co-integration tests, Kalman Filters, hazard functions, etc. I have found 162 (or 4.7%) papers where these techniques are the main ones used. The fraction was highest in 1997. Since then it has varied, but with no trend.

I think that the main reason for the lack of success for the new empirics is that it is quite bulky to report a careful set of co-integration tests or VARs, and they often show results that are far from useful in the sense that they are unclear and difficult to interpret. With some introduction and discussion, there is not much space left in the article. Therefore, we are dealing with a cookbook that makes for rather dull dishes, which are difficult to sell in the market.

Note the contrast between (M3.2) and (M3.3): (M3.2) makes it possible to write papers that are too good, while (M3.3) often makes them too dull. This contributes to explain why (M3.2) is getting (even) more popular and the lack of success of (M3.3), but then, it is arguable that it is more dangerous to act on exaggerated results than on results that are weak.

3 The 10 journals

The 10 journals chosen are: (J1) Can [Canadian Journal of Economics], (J2) Emp [Empirical Economics], (J3) EER [European Economic Review], (J4) EJPE [European Journal of Political Economy], (J5) JEBO [Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization], (J6) Inter [Journal of International Economics], (J7) Macro [Journal of Macroeconomics], (J8) Kyklos, (J9) PuCh [Public Choice], and (J10) SJE [Scandinavian Journal of Economics].

Section 3.1 discusses the choice of journals, while Section 3.2 considers how journals deal with the pressure for publication. Section 3.3 shows the marked difference in publication profile of the journals, and Section 3.4 tests if the trends in methods are significant.

3.1 The selection of journals

They should be general interest journals – methodological journals are excluded. By general interest, I mean that they bring papers where an executive summary may interest policymakers and people in general. (ii) They should be journals in English (the Canadian Journal includes one paper in French), which are open to researchers from all countries, so that the majority of the authors are from outside the country of the journal. [11] (iii) They should be sufficiently different so that it is likely that patterns, which apply to these journals, tell a believable story about economic research. Note that (i) and (iii) require some compromises, as is evident in the choice of (J2), (J6), (J7), and (J8) ( Table 4 ).

The 10 journals covered

Journal		Volume number					Regular research papers published					Growth
Code	Name	1997	2002	2007	2012	2017	1997	2002	2007	2012	2017	All	% p.a.
(J1)	Can	30	35	40	45	50	68	43	55	66	46	278	−1.9
(J2)	Emp	22	27	32–43	42–3	52–3	33	36	48	104	139	360	7.5
(J3)	EER	41	46	51	56	91–100	56	91	89	106	140	482	4.7
(J4)	EJPE	13	18	23	28	46–50	42	40	68	47	49	246	0.8
(J5)	JEBO	32	47–9	62–4	82–4	133–44	41	85	101	207	229	663	9.0
(J6)	Inter	42	56–8	71–3	86–8	104–9	45	59	66	87	93	350	3.7
(J7)	Macro	19	24	29	34	51–4	44	25	51	79	65	264	2.0
(J8)	Kyklos	50	55	60	65	70	21	22	30	29	24	126	0.7
(J9)	PuCh	90–3	110–3	130–3	150–3	170–3	83	87	114	99	67	450	−1.1
(J10)	SJE	99	104	109	114	119	31	30	39	57	39	196	1.2
	All	—	—	—	—	—	464	518	661	881	891	3,415	3.3

Note. Growth is the average annual growth from 1997 to 2017 in the number of papers published.

Methodological journals are excluded, as they are not interesting to outsiders. However, new methods are developed to be used in general interest journals. From studies of citations, we know that useful methodological papers are highly cited. If they remain unused, we presume that it is because they are useless, though, of course, there may be a long lag.

The choice of journals may contain some subjectivity, but I think that they are sufficiently diverse so that patterns that generalize across these journals will also generalize across a broader range of good journals.

The papers included are the regular research articles. Consequently, I exclude short notes to other papers and book reviews, [12] except for a few article-long discussions of controversial books.

3.2 Creating space in journals

As mentioned in the introduction, the annual production of research papers in economics has now reached about 1,000 papers in top journals, and about 14,000 papers in the group of good journals. [13] The production has grown with 3.3% per year, and thus it has doubled the last twenty years. The hard-working researcher will read less than 100 papers a year. I know of no signs that this number is increasing. Thus, the upward trend in publication must be due to the large increase in the importance of publications for the careers of researchers, which has greatly increased the production of papers. There has also been a large increase in the number of researches, but as citations are increasingly skewed toward the top journals (see Heckman & Moktan, 2018 ), it has not increased demand for papers correspondingly. The pressures from the supply side have caused journals to look for ways to create space.

Book reviews have dropped to less than 1/3. Perhaps, it also indicates that economists read fewer books than they used to. Journals have increasingly come to use smaller fonts and larger pages, allowing more words per page. The journals from North-Holland Elsevier have managed to cram almost two old pages into one new one. [14] This makes it easier to publish papers, while they become harder to read.

Many journals have changed their numbering system for the annual issues, making it less transparent how much they publish. Only three – Canadian Economic Journal, Kyklos, and Scandinavian Journal of Economics – have kept the schedule of publishing one volume of four issues per year. It gives about 40 papers per year. Public Choice has a (fairly) consistent system with four volumes of two double issues per year – this gives about 100 papers. The remaining journals have changed their numbering system and increased the number of papers published per year – often dramatically.

Thus, I assess the wave of publications is caused by the increased supply of papers and not to the demand for reading material. Consequently, the study confirms and updates the observation by Temple ( 1918 , p. 242): “… as the world gets older the more people are inclined to write but the less they are inclined to read.”

3.3 How different are the journals?

The appendix reports the counts for each year and journal of the research methods. From these counts, a set of χ 2 -scores is calculated for the three main groups of methods – they are reported in Table 5 . It gives the χ 2 -test comparing the profile of each journal to the one of the other nine journals taken to be the theoretical distribution.

The methodological profile of the journals –  χ 2 -scores for main groups

Journal		(M1)	(M2)	(M3)	Sum	-value
Code	Name	Theory	Experiment	Empirical	(3)-test	(%)
(J1)	Can	7.4(+)	15.3(−)	1.7(−)	24.4	0.00
(J2)	Emp	47.4(−)	16.0(−)	89.5(+)	152.9	0.00
(J3)	EER	17.8(+)	0.3(−)	16.5(−)	34.4	0.00
(J4)	EJPE	0.1(+)	11.2(−)	1.0(+)	12.2	0.31
(J5)	JEBO	1.6(−)	1357.7(+)	41.1(−)	1404.4	0.00
(J6)	Inter	2.4(+)	24.8(−)	0.1(+)	27.3	0.00
(J7)	Macro	0.1(+)	18.2(−)	1.7(+)	20.0	0.01
(J8)	Kyklos	20.1(−)	3.3(−)	31.2(+)	54.6	0.00
(J9)	PuCh	0.0(+)	11.7(−)	2.2(+)	13.9	0.14
(J10)	SJE	10.5(+)	1.8(−)	8.2(−)	20.4	0.01

Note: The χ 2 -scores are calculated relative to all other journals. The sign (+) or (−) indicates if the journal has too many or too few papers relatively in the category. The P -values for the χ 2 (3)-test always reject that the journal has the same methodological profile as the other nine journals.

The test rejects that the distribution is the same as the average for any of the journals. The closest to the average is the EJPE and Public Choice. The two most deviating scores are for the most micro-oriented journal JEBO, which brings many experimental papers, and of course, Empirical Economics, which brings many empirical papers.

3.4 Trends in the use of the methods

Table 3 already gave an impression of the main trends in the methods preferred by economists. I now test if these impressions are statistically significant. The tests have to be tailored to disregard three differences between the journals: their methodological profiles, the number of papers they publish, and the trend in the number. Table 6 reports a set of distribution free tests, which overcome these differences. The tests are done on the shares of each research method for each journal. As the data cover five years, it gives 10 pairs of years to compare. [15] The three trend-scores in the []-brackets count how often the shares go up, down, or stay the same in the 10 cases. This is the count done for a Kendall rank correlation comparing the five shares with a positive trend (such as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).

Trend-scores and tests for the eight subgroups of methods across the 10 journals

Journal		(M1.1)	(M1.2)	(M1.3)	(M2.1)	(M2.2)	(M3.1)	(M3.2)	(M3.3)
Code	Name	Theory	Stat met	Survey	Exp.	Event	Descript.	Classical	Newer
(J1)	Can		[6, 3, 1]	[6, 3, 1]	[3, 1, 6]	[3, 1, 6]	[6, 4, 0]	[8, 2, 0]	[5, 4, 1]
(J2)	Emp	[2, 8, 0]	[6, 4, 0]	[0, 7, 3]	[0, 4, 6]	[3, 4, 3]	[6, 4, 0]	[8, 2, 0]	[4, 6, 0]
(J3)	EER	[3, 7, 0]	[4, 0, 6]			[3, 1, 6]	[7, 3, 0]	[8, 2, 0]	[3, 7, 0]
(J4)	EJPE		[0, 0, 10]		[4, 0, 6]	[4, 0, 6]	[4, 6, 0]		[8, 1, 0]
(J5)	JEBO	[2, 8, 0]	[6, 1, 3]	[6, 3, 1]	[7, 3, 0]	[6, 1, 3]	[4, 6, 0]	[8, 2, 0]	[2, 4, 3]
(J6)	Inter		[0, 0, 10]	[0, 0, 10]	[0, 0, 10]	[0, 0, 10]	[8, 2, 0]	[8, 2, 0]	[4, 6, 0]
(J7)	Macro	[6, 4, 0]	[5, 5, 0]	[7, 2, 1]	[0, 0, 10]	[0, 0, 10]		[3, 7, 0]
(J8)	Kyklos	[2, 8, 0]	[0, 0, 10]	[2, 2, 6]	[2, 7, 1]	[0, 0, 10]	[4, 6, 0]		[2, 2, 6]
(J9)	PuCh	[3, 7, 0]	[4, 3, 3]	[6, 3, 1]	[4, 3, 3]	[0, 0, 10]	[5, 5, 0]	[6, 4, 0]	[6, 3, 1]
(J10)	SJE		[4, 0, 6]	[6, 3, 1]	[1, 3, 6]	[3, 1, 6]	[6, 4, 0]	[6, 4, 0]	[6, 1, 1]
All 100 per col.		[22, 78, 0]	[35, 16, 49]	[35, 41, 24]	[30, 22, 48]	[22, 8, 70]	[59, 41, 0]	[73, 27, 0]	[42, 43, 13]
Binominal test				56%	33%		8.86%		100%

Note: The three trend-scores in each [ I 1 , I 2 , I 3 ]-bracket are a Kendall-count over all 10 combinations of years. I 1 counts how often the share goes up. I 2 counts when the share goes down, and I 3 counts the number of ties. Most ties occur when there are no observations either year. Thus, I 1 + I 2 + I 3 = 10. The tests are two-sided binominal tests disregarding the zeroes. The test results in bold are significant at the 5% level.

The first set of trend-scores for (M1.1) and (J1) is [1, 9, 0]. It means that 1 of the 10 share-pairs increases, while nine decrease and no ties are found. The two-sided binominal test is 2%, so it is unlikely to happen. Nine of the ten journals in the (M1.1)-column have a majority of falling shares. The important point is that the counts in one column can be added – as is done in the all-row; this gives a powerful trend test that disregards differences between journals and the number of papers published. ( Table A1 )

Four of the trend-tests are significant: The fall in theoretical papers and the rise in classical papers. There is also a rise in the share of stat method and event studies. It is surprising that there is no trend in the number of experimental studies, but see Table A2 (in Appendix).

4 An attempt to interpret the pattern found

The development in the methods pursued by researchers in economics is a reaction to the demand and supply forces on the market for economic papers. As already argued, it seems that a key factor is the increasing production of papers.

The shares add to 100, so the decline of one method means that the others rise. Section 4.1 looks at the biggest change – the reduction in theory papers. Section 4.2 discusses the rise in two new categories. Section 4.3 considers the large increase in the classical method, while Section 4.4 looks at what we know about that method from meta-analysis.

4.1 The decline of theory: economics suffers from theory fatigue [16]

The papers in economic theory have dropped from 59.5 to 33.6% – this is the largest change for any of the eight subgroups. [17] It is highly significant in the trend test. I attribute this drop to theory fatigue.

As mentioned in Section 2.1, the ideal theory paper presents a (simple) new model that recasts the way we look at something important. However, most theory papers are less exciting: They start from the standard model and argue that a well-known conclusion reached from the model hinges upon a debatable assumption – if it changes, so does the conclusion. Such papers are useful. From a literature on one main model, the profession learns its strengths and weaknesses. It appears that no generally accepted method exists to summarize this knowledge in a systematic way, though many thoughtful summaries have appeared.

I think that there is a deeper problem explaining theory fatigue. It is that many theoretical papers are quite unconvincing. Granted that the calculations are done right, believability hinges on the realism of the assumptions at the start and of the results presented at the end. In order for a model to convince, it should (at least) demonstrate the realism of either the assumptions or the outcome. [18] If both ends appear to hang in the air, it becomes a game giving little new knowledge about the world, however skillfully played.

The theory fatigue has caused a demand for simulations demonstrating that the models can mimic something in the world. Kydland and Prescott pioneered calibration methods (see their 1991 ). Calibrations may be carefully done, but it often appears like a numerical solution of a model that is too complex to allow an analytical solution.

4.2 Two examples of waves: one that is still rising and another that is fizzling out

When a new method of gaining insights in the economy first appears, it is surrounded by doubts, but it also promises a high marginal productivity of knowledge. Gradually the doubts subside, and many researchers enter the field. After some time this will cause the marginal productivity of the method to fall, and it becomes less interesting. The eight methods include two newer ones: Lab experiments and newer stats. [19]

It is not surprising that papers with lab experiments are increasing, though it did take a long time: The seminal paper presenting the technique was Smith ( 1962 ), but only a handful of papers are from the 1960s. Charles Plott organized the first experimental lab 10 years later – this created a new standard for experiments, but required an investment in a lab and some staff. Labs became more common in the 1990s as PCs got cheaper and software was developed to handle experiments, but only 1.9% of the papers in the 10 journals reported lab experiments in 1997. This has now increased to 9.7%, so the wave is still rising. The trend in experiments is concentrated in a few journals, so the trend test in Table 6 is insignificant, but it is significant in the Appendix Table A2 , where it is done on the sum of articles irrespective of the journal.

In addition to the rising share of lab experiment papers in some journals, the journal Experimental Economics was started in 1998, where it published 281 pages in three issues. In 2017, it had reached 1,006 pages in four issues, [20] which is an annual increase of 6.5%.

Compared with the success of experimental economics, the motley category of newer empirics has had a more modest success, as the fraction of papers in the 5 years are 5.8, 5.2, 3.5, 5.4, and 4.2, which has no trend. Newer stats also require investment, but mainly in human capital. [21] Some of the papers using the classical methodology contain a table with Dickey-Fuller tests or some eigenvalues of the data matrix, but they are normally peripheral to the analysis. A couple of papers use Kalman filters, and a dozen papers use Bayesian VARs. However, it is clear that the newer empirics have made little headway into our sample of general interest journals.

4.3 The steady rise of the classical method: flexibility rewarded

The typical classical paper provides estimates of a key effect that decision-makers outside academia want to know. This makes the paper policy relevant right from the start, and in many cases, it is possible to write a one page executive summary to the said decision-makers.

The three-step convention (see Section 2.3) is often followed rather loosely. The estimation model is nearly always much simpler than the theory. Thus, while the model can be derived from a theory, the reverse does not apply. Sometimes, the model seems to follow straight from common sense, and if the link from the theory to the model is thin, it begs the question: Is the theory really necessary? In such cases, it is hard to be convinced that the tests “confirm” the theory, but then, of course, tests only say that the data do not reject the theory.

The classical method is often only a presentation devise. Think of a researcher who has reached a nice publishable result through a long and tortuous path, including some failed attempts to find such results. It is not possible to describe that path within the severely limited space of an article. In addition, such a presentation would be rather dull to read, and none of us likes to talk about wasted efforts that in hindsight seem a bit silly. Here, the classical method becomes a convenient presentation device.

The biggest source of variation in the results is the choice of control/modifier variables. All datasets presumably contain some general and some special information, where the latter depends on the circumstances prevailing when the data were compiled. The regression should be controlled for these circumstances in order to reach the general result. Such ceteris paribus controls are not part of the theory, so many possible controls may be added. The ones chosen for publication often appear to be the ones delivering the “right” results by the priors of the researcher. The justification for their inclusion is often thin, and if two-stage regressions are used, the first stage instruments often have an even thinner justification.

Thus, the classical method is rather malleable to the preferences and interests of researchers and sponsors. This means that some papers using the classical technique are not what they pretend, as already pointed out by Leamer ( 1983 ), see also Paldam ( 2018 ) for new references and theory. The fact that data mining is tempting suggests that it is often possible to reach smashing results, making the paper nice to read. This may be precisely why it is cited.

Many papers using the classical method throw in some bits of exotic statistics technique to demonstrate the robustness of the result and the ability of the researcher. This presumably helps to generate credibility.

4.4 Knowledge about classical papers reached from meta-studies

(m1)	The range of the estimates is typically amazingly large, given the high -ratios reported. This confirms that -ratios are problematic as claimed in Section 2.3.
(m2)	Publication biases (exaggerations) are common, i.e., meta-analyses routinely reject the null hypothesis of no publication bias. My own crude rule of thumb is that exaggeration is by a factor two – the two meta–meta studies cited give some support to this rule.
(m3)	The meta-average estimated from all studies normally converges, and for > 30, the meta-average normally stabilizes to a well-defined value, see Doucouliagos et al. ( ).

Individual studies using the classical method often look better than they are, and thus they are more uncertain than they appear, but we may think of the value of convergence for large N s (number of observations) as the truth. The exaggeration is largest in the beginning of a new literature, but gradually it becomes smaller. Thus, the classical method does generate truth when the effect searched for has been studied from many sides. The word research does mean that the search has to be repeated! It is highly risky to trust a few papers only.

Meta-analysis has found other results such as: Results in top journals do not stand out. It is necessary to look at many journals, as many papers on the same effect are needed. Little of the large variation between results is due to the choice of estimators.

A similar development should occur also for experimental economics. Experiments fall in families: A large number cover prisoner’s dilemma games, but there are also many studies of dictator games, auction games, etc. Surveys summarizing what we have learned about these games seem highly needed. Assessed summaries of old experiments are common, notably in introductions to papers reporting new ones. It should be possible to extract the knowledge reached by sets of related lab experiments in a quantitative way, by some sort of meta-technique, but this has barely started. The first pioneering meta-studies of lab experiments do find the usual wide variation of results from seemingly closely related experiments. [25] A recent large-scale replicability study by Camerer et al. ( 2018 ) finds that published experiments in the high quality journal Nature and Science exaggerate by a factor two just like regression studies using the classical method.

5 Conclusion

The study presents evidence that over the last 20 years economic research has moved away from theory towards empirical work using the classical method.

From the eighties onward, there has been a steady stream of papers pointing out that the classical method suffers from excess flexibility. It does deliver relevant results, but they tend to be too good. [26] While, increasingly, we know the size of the problems of the classical method, systematic knowledge about the problems of the other methods is weaker. It is possible that the problems are smaller, but we do not know.

Therefore, it is clear that obtaining solid knowledge about the size of an important effect requires a great deal of papers analyzing many aspects of the effect and a careful quantitative survey. It is a well-known principle in the harder sciences that results need repeated independent replication to be truly trustworthy. In economics, this is only accepted in principle.

The classical method of empirical research is gradually winning, and this is a fine development: It does give answers to important policy questions. These answers are highly variable and often exaggerated, but through the efforts of many competing researchers, solid knowledge will gradually emerge.

Home page: http://www.martin.paldam.dk

Acknowledgments

The paper has been presented at the 2018 MAER-Net Colloquium in Melbourne, the Kiel Aarhus workshop in 2018, and at the European Public Choice 2019 Meeting in Jerusalem. I am grateful for all comments, especially from Chris Doucouliagos, Eelke de Jong, and Bob Reed. In addition, I thank the referees for constructive advice.

Conflict of interest: Author states no conflict of interest.

Appendix: Two tables and some assessments of the size of the profession

The text needs some numbers to assess the representativity of the results reached. These numbers just need to be orders of magnitude. I use the standard three-level classification in A, B, and C of researchers, departments, and journals. The connections between the three categories are dynamic and rely on complex sorting mechanisms. In an international setting, it matters that researchers have preferences for countries, notably their own. The relation between the three categories has a stochastic element.

The World of Learning organization reports on 36,000 universities, colleges, and other institutes of tertiary education and research. Many of these institutions are mainly engaged in undergraduate teaching, and some are quite modest. If half of these institutions have a program in economics, with a staff of at least five, the total stock of academic economists is 100,000, of which most are at the C-level.

The A-level of about 500 tenured researchers working at the top ten universities (mainly) publishes in the top 10 journals that bring less than 1,000 papers per year; [27] see Heckman and Moktan (2020). They (mainly) cite each other, but they greatly influence other researchers. [28] The B-level consists of about 15–20,000 researchers who work at 4–500 research universities, with graduate programs and ambitions to publish. They (mainly) publish in the next level of about 150 journals. [29] In addition, there are at least another 1,000 institutions that strive to move up in the hierarchy.

The counts for each of the 10 journals

		Main group		(M1)			(M2)		(M3)
		Subgroup		(M1.1)	(M1.2)	(M1.3)	(M2.1)	(M2.2)	(M3.1)	(M3.2)	(M3.3)
			Number papers	Theory	Stat. theory	Surveys meta	Experiments	Event studies	Descriptive	Classical empiric	Newer empiric
	(J1)	Can	68	47		2			10	8	1
	(J2)	Emp	33	11	5			1	7	3	6
	(J3)	EER	56	34		3			4	12	3
	(J4)	EJPE	42	29		2			5	6
	(J5)	JEBO	41	26			7		3	5
	(J6)	Inter	45	35					1	7	2
	(J7)	Macro	44	18					1	10	15
	(J8)	Kyklos	21	10			1		4	6
	(J9)	PuCh	83	40		7	1	1	8	26
	(J10)	SJE	31	26		1				4
	(J1)	Can	43	27	1				5	7	3
	(J2)	Emp	36	1	14	1			4	7	9
	(J3)	EER	91	63		4	3		4	17
	(J4)	EJPE	40	27		2			2	9
	(J5)	JEBO	85	52		3	14		10	5	1
	(J6)	Inter	59	40					4	9	6
	(J7)	Macro	25	8	2	1				6	8
	(J8)	Kyklos	22	6			1		2	13
	(J9)	PuCh	87	39	2		1		14	31
	(J10)	SJE	30	18			2			10
	(J1)	Can	55	26		4			6	17	2
	(J2)	Emp	48	4	8				3	23	10
	(J3)	EER	89	55		2	1		8	20	3
	(J4)	EJPE	68	36		2			9	20	1
	(J5)	JEBO	101	73			10	3	3	12
	(J6)	Inter	66	39					4	21	2
	(J7)	Macro	51	30	1				6	10	4
	(J8)	Kyklos	30	2		1			6	20	1
	(J9)	PuCh	114	53			4		19	38
	(J10)	SJE	39	29	1			1	2	6
	(J1)	Can	66	33	1		1	1	8	21	1
	(J2)	Emp	104	8	16				17	38	25
	(J3)	EER	106	56			7	1	7	33	2
	(J4)	EJPE	47	12		1			2	31	1
	(J5)	JEBO	207	75	2	9	50		17	52	2
	(J6)	Inter	87	36					17	33	1
	(J7)	Macro	79	32	2	3			12	14	16
	(J8)	Kyklos	29	8					2	19
	(J9)	PuCh	99	47			2		2	48
	(J10)	SJE	57	32			2	1	22
	(J1)	Can	46	20	1	5			9	9	2
	(J2)	Emp	139	1	25			4	30	60	19
	(J3)	EER	140	75	1	1	16		13	32	2
	(J4)	EJPE	49	14			2	1	4	27	1
	(J5)	JEBO	229	66	1	3	63	9	11	76
	(J6)	Inter	93	42					10	33	8
	(J7)	Macro	65	28	1	9			10	13	4
	(J8)	Kyklos	24	1			1		3	19
	(J9)	PuCh	67	33		1	3		10	20
	(J10)	SJE	39	19		1	1	1	4	12	1

Counts, shares, and changes for all ten journals for subgroups

	Number	(M1.1)	(M1.2)	(M1.3)	(M2.1)	(M2.2)	(M3.1)	(M3.2)	(M3.3)
Year		I: Sum of counts
1997	464	276	5	15	9	2	43	87	27
2002	518	281	19	11	21	0	45	114	27
2007	661	347	10	9	15	4	66	187	23
2012	881	339	21	13	62	3	106	289	48
2017	891	299	29	20	86	15	104	301	37
All years	3,415	1,542	84	68	193	24	364	978	162
Year		II: Average fraction in per cent
1997	100	59.5	1.1	3.2	1.9	0.4	9.3	18.8	5.8
2002	100	54.2	3.7	2.1	4.1	—	8.7	22.0	5.2
2007	100	52.5	1.5	1.4	2.3	0.6	10.0	28.3	3.5
2012	100	38.5	2.4	1.5	7.0	0.3	12.0	32.8	5.4
2017	100	33.6	3.3	2.2	9.7	1.7	11.7	33.8	4.2
All years	100	45.2	2.5	2.0	5.7	0.7	10.7	28.6	4.7
Trends-scores		[0, 10, 0]	[7, 3, 0]	[4, 6, 0]	[9, 1, 0]	[5, 5, 0]	[8, 2, 0]	[10, 0, 0]	[3, 7, 0]
Binominal test			34	37		100	11		34
From	To	III: Change of fraction in percentage points
1997	2002	−5.2	2.6	−1.1	2.1	−0.4	−0.6	3.3	−0.6
2002	2007	−1.8	−2.2	−0.8	−1.8	0.6	1.3	6.3	−1.7
2007	2012	−14.0	0.9	0.1	4.8	−0.3	2.0	4.5	2.0
2012	2017	−4.9	0.9	0.8	2.6	1.3	−0.4	1.0	−1.3
1997	2017	−25.9	2.2	−1.0	7.7	1.3	2.4	15.0	−1.7

Note: The trend-scores are calculated as in Table 6 . Compared to the results in Table 6 , the results are similar, but the power is less than before. However, note that the results in Column (M2.1) dealing with experiments are stronger in Table A2 . This has to do with the way missing observations are treated in the test.

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Matching with Asymmetric Information: Priority Design and the Curse of Acceptance

Peter troyan, andrew kloosterman.

Desirable Rankings: A New Method for Ranking Outcomes of a Competitive Process

Rankings-Dependent Preferences: A Real Goods Matching Experiment

A Theory of Simplicity in Games and Mechanism Design

Peter troyan; marek pycia.

Policing in Patriarchy: An Experimental Evaluation of Reforms to Improve Police Responsiveness to Women in India

Sandip sukhtankar;gabrielle kruks-wisner and akshay mangla.

Lapses in Long-Term Care Insurance

Leora friedberg, wenliang hou, wei sun, anthony webb.

Capitalism and Democracy

Kenneth elzinga.

Elbert Gary & Bill Gates: A Study in Antitrust Contrasts

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In-Person versus Online Instruction: Evidence from Principles of Economics

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In the Beginning: The Creation of the Economic Expert in Antitrust,”

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Christianity and Antitrust: A Nexus

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Infringing Use as a Path to Legal Consumption: Evidence from a Field Experiment

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Efficiency and Foreclosure Effects of Vertical Rebates: Empirical Evidence

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General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs: Experimental Evidence From India

Sandip sukhtankar;paul niehaus;karthik muralidharan.

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Simon p. anderson martin peitz.

Price Discrimination in the Information Age: Prices, Poaching, and Privacy with Personalized Targeted Discounts

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Beyond Health: Non-Health Risk and the Value of Disability Insurance

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Road capacity, domestic trade and regional outcomes

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Coordinated Capacity Reductions and Public Communication in the Airline Industry

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Nonrepresentativeness in Population Health Research: Evidence from a COVID-19 Antibody Study

Dutz, Deniz, Michael Greenstone, Ali Hortaçsu, Santiago Lacouture, Magne Mogstad, Azeem M. Shaikh, Alexander Torgovitsky, and Winnie van Dijk. "Nonrepresentativeness in Population Health Research: Evidence from a COVID-19 Antibody Study."  American Economic Review: Insights  6, no. 3 (2024): 313-323.

We analyze representativeness in a COVID-19 serological study with randomized participation incentives. We find large participation gaps by race and income when incentives are lower. High incentives increase participation rates for all groups but increase them more among under-represented groups. High incentives restore representativeness on race and income and also on health variables likely to be correlated with seropositivity, such as the uninsured rate, hospitalization rates, and an aggregate COVID-19 risk index.

Total Economic Impact Study Reveals a Return on Investment of 184% for Veracode Application Risk Management Platform Customers

Research Finds Veracode Platform Improved Developer Productivity By 80% and Boosts AppSec Efficiency By 85%

Productivity Gains From Software Security Lead to a 20% Increase in Revenue

Burlington, Mass. – September 10, 2024 – Veracode , a global leader in application risk management, today released a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on The Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) of Veracode’s Application Risk Management Platform. The study revealed that Veracode delivered a 184 percent return on investment (ROI) to customers over a three-year period, as well as a material Net Present Value and a payback period of less than six months.  

Specifically, there were four key drivers of the economic impact: 

• A 75 percent reduction in risk of software-based attacks    
• 80 percent developer productivity recapture that can be reallocated to product innovation 
• 85 percent efficiency gained in application security from increased automation 
• Most noteworthy, a 20 percent growth in revenues from software security that drove new products, new market entries, speed to market, and security as a differentiator  

With software supply chain attacks on the rise, security and DevSecOps leaders need ways to source solutions that demonstrably protect their organizations, while helping them prove the value of application risk management. Forrester conducted the TEI study to examine the potential ROI for enterprises using the Veracode platform. Based on a series of interviews with Veracode customers, Forrester constructed a $2 billion “composite organization,” with 10,000 employees, 800 developers, and a business goal of increasing development velocity in support of revenue growth. The findings below are representative of these aggregated insights. 

Reduced Risk of Software-based Attacks  

Use of the Veracode platform resulted in a 75 percent decrease in the risk of a software supply chain-based attack which reduced associated breach costs for the study’s composite customer by $1.5 million over three years. The composite analysis also revealed annual financial benefits of about $7.1 million per year over a three-year engagement versus an upfront cost of $2.5 million, inclusive of platform fees, internal and third-party development costs, ongoing administration adoption, training and development. When added together, the average NPV, or the total value of an investment opportunity for Veracode customers over three years, stood at $4.6 million, with a payback period of less than six months. 

As one study participant, an Application Security Engineer, noted, “We have managed to eliminate all high and very high vulnerabilities across all of the apps now for two months. We run the reports and scans every day, and for two months we have not seen a single high- or very high-severity vulnerability show up. So, they’re not just fixing them; they’re preventing them by the reuse of known secure functions and modules across the code base.” 

Developer Productivity Unlocked  

The Forrester TEI analysis revealed that giving developers better visibility into security flaws earlier in the development process helps them rapidly reduce security debt. Use of Veracode’s platform resulted in an 80 percent improvement in developer productivity, totaling 70,000 developer hours and $3.41 million that could be reallocated to product innovation for the composite customer. 

“We started scanning about a year ago and have worked through [approximately] 60 percent of the outstanding open-source [software flaws]. That’s 20 years of tech debt we’ve worked through in that time, largely because we were able to have the controls in place for software releases with Veracode,” another study participant, a CISO in the healthcare technology field, stated. 

Efficiency Through Automation  

Forrester determined that customers experience an 85 percent reduction in the effort and time required to remediate flaws when using Veracode’s tooling to automate manual workflows. The study found the use of automation transformed the process and efficacy of AppSec programs by freeing up almost 25,000 hours—equivalent to nearly three years. The resulting productivity gains saved $1.3 million for the composite customer, as well as enabling Veracode customers to scale their scanning capacity. 

As one Head of Global Engineering Tools in the professional services sector commented, “I would say [prior to Veracode] we weren’t able to [triage] efficiently enough. … To do that properly then, you would spend at least 10 hours to evaluate [which scans to triage], and now you can do it by a glance.” 

Customers Gain Competitive Advantage  

Modern enterprises face the constant challenge of innovating and delivering secure code faster to stay ahead of the competition. The Forrester TEI study found using Veracode to accelerate and shift security earlier in the software development lifecycle enabled the composite customer to bring features and products to market faster, open new markets and revenue streams, and use security as a differentiator. Moreover, organizations increased their revenue by 20 percent, which made an additional $940,000 in profits for the composite customer directly attributable to using Veracode’s solution. 

Another study participant, a Director of Risk and Security, affirmed Veracode’s innovation and speed of delivery; “We’re constantly delivering new feature functions every two weeks. Back in the day, a customer might be sitting on a version for three years with no feature function improvement and then go through an upgrade that takes six or eight months to get it, whereas now we’re deploying new features and functions every two weeks.” 

Additional key findings of the Forrester TEI study included:  

• Augmented reporting capabilities  
• Higher levels of IT spend dedicated to security  
• Optimized technology costs  
• An improved security culture   
• Improved developer experience and security maturity  

“Ensuring organizations are effectively securing their software against cyberattacks, while facing the reality of constrained budgets, has never been more critical.” said Tim Jarrett, Group Vice President of Product Management at Veracode. “The Forrester TEI study reaffirms that Veracode not only provides businesses with top-tier services, but also delivers meaningful returns and business impact to increase agility and innovation. I’m grateful to our customers for sharing their experiences and helping us demonstrate the true value of Veracode’s platform. This is why organizations place their trust in us every day.” 

The Forrester TEI study provides a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of the Veracode platform on organizations. Forrester interviewed four representatives with experience using the Veracode platform. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single, “composite organization” with $2 billion in annual revenue, 10,000 full-time employees, 1,000 managed apps, 800 developers, and a business goal of increasing development velocity in support of strategic revenue growth. 

For more information on the Total Economic Impact™ of Veracode, download the complete study and join a LinkedIn Live where the benefits will be discussed. 

About Veracode

Veracode is a global leader in Application Risk Management for the AI era. Powered by trillions of lines of code scans and a proprietary AI-assisted remediation engine, the Veracode platform is trusted by organizations worldwide to build and maintain secure software from code creation to cloud deployment. Thousands of the world’s leading development and security teams use Veracode every second of every day to get accurate, actionable visibility of exploitable risk, achieve real-time vulnerability remediation, and reduce their security debt at scale. Veracode is a multi-award-winning company offering capabilities to secure the entire software development life cycle, including Veracode Fix, Static Analysis, Dynamic Analysis, Software Composition Analysis, Container Security, Application Security Posture Management, and Penetration Testing.

Learn more at  www.veracode.com , on the  Veracode blog , and on  LinkedIn  and  Twitter.

Copyright © 2024 Veracode, Inc. All rights reserved. Veracode is a registered trademark of Veracode, Inc. in the United States and may be registered in certain other jurisdictions. All other product names, brands or logos belong to their respective holders. All other trademarks cited herein are property of their respective owners.

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Veracode: Katy Gwilliam, Head of Global Communications, Veracode [email protected] +44.7584.341.110 Related Links veracode.com

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