Publication Bias and Editorial Statement on Negative Findings

Cristina Blanco-Perez () and Abel Brodeur
Additional contact information
Cristina Blanco-Perez: Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON

No 1907E, Working Papers from University of Ottawa, Department of Economics

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. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 C13 C44 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sog
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/40314/1/1907E.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Publication Bias and Editorial Statement on Negative Findings (2020)
Working Paper: Publication Bias and Editorial Statement on Negative Findings (2019)
Working Paper: Publication Bias and Editorial Statement on Negative Findings (2019)
Working Paper: Publication Bias and Editorial Statement on Negative Findings (2017)
Working Paper: Publication Bias and Editorial Statement on Negative Findings (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ott:wpaper:1907e

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Ottawa, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aggey Semenov ().