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

Paldam Martin ()
Additional contact information
Paldam Martin: Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Fuglesangs Allé 4, DK-8210 Aarhus V, Denmark

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal, 2021, vol. 15, issue 1, 28-42

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: research methods; survey of journals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 B41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/econ-2021-0003 (text/html)

Related works:
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:bpj:econoa:v:15:y:2021:i:1:p:28-42:n:12

DOI: 10.1515/econ-2021-0003

Access Statistics for this article

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal is currently edited by Katharine Rockett

More articles in Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().