Honesty and Integrity in Economics

Thomas Mayer

No 160, Working Papers from University of California, Davis, Department of Economics

Abstract: When looked at individually there is little reason to think that economists lack integrity and are dishonest. Yet, when we look at academic papers written by economists we can see biases. This paper tries to reconcile these two observations by arguing that the constraints the profession sets on permitted practices are loose enough to allow economists to maintain their biases while conforming to the mores of their profession. There is little reason to think that economics is worse in this respect than some other fields.

Keywords: honesty; integrity; culture of economics; significance tests; data mining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 B41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 2009-01-20
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/k9r3UDRtVziya2wgbvSR5BC6/09-2.pdf (application/pdf)

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:cda:wpaper:160

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of California, Davis, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Letters and Science IT Services Unit ().