Selective reporting of placebo tests in top economics journals

Anna Dreber, Magnus Johannesson and Yifan Yang

Economic Inquiry, 2024, vol. 62, issue 3, 921-932

Abstract: Placebo tests provide incentives to underreport statistically significant tests, a form of reversed p‐hacking. We test for such underreporting in 11 top economics journals between 2009 and 2021 based on a pre‐registered analysis plan. If the null hypothesis is true in all tests, 2.5% of them should be significant at the 5% level with an effect in the same direction as the main test (and 5% in total). The actual fraction of statistically significant placebo tests with an effect in the same direction is 1.29% (95% CI [0.83, 1.63]), and the overall fraction of statistically significant placebo tests is 3.10% (95% CI [2.2, 4.0]).

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13217

Related works:
Working Paper: Selective Reporting of Placebo Tests in Top Economics Journals (2023)
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:bla:ecinqu:v:62:y:2024:i:3:p:921-932

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... s.aspx?ref=1465-7295

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Tim Salmon

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().