Tracking the Credibility Revolution across Fields

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham

No 35051, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: How far has the credibility revolution spread beyond applied microeconomics? I update Currie, Kleven, and Zwiers (2020b) using approximately 44,000 papers—31,500 NBER working papers (1982–2025) and 12,300 articles from eleven top economics and finance journals (2011–2024)—measuring mentions of empirical methods through keyword matching. Three findings emerge. First, finance and macro/other fields differ substantially from applied micro in their mention of credibility revolution methods: as of 2024, 63 percent of applied micro papers mention experimental or quasi-experimental methods, compared to 47 percent in finance and 39 percent in macro/other. The current levels in finance and macro/other are comparable to where applied micro was in 2008–2010, though the long-run trajectories may differ. Second, growth outside applied micro is driven overwhelmingly by difference-in-differences; including DiD raises the share of finance papers mentioning any experimental or quasi-experimental method by roughly 55 percent versus 30 percent for applied micro. Other quasi-experimental methods—instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, experiments—have seen far less growth. Third, I document a striking gap between the methods studied in the Journal of Econometrics—where nonparametric estimation and asymptotic theory dominate—and those used by applied researchers, where DiD and identification strategies dominate. Published journal articles confirm these patterns are not artifacts of the NBER sample.

JEL-codes: B40 C01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-hpe and nep-sog
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Working Paper: Tracking the Credibility Revolution across Fields (2024)
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