Science under Threat? A Natural Experiment in Economics

Dominic Rohner, Oliver Vanden Eynde and Philine Widmer

No 21228, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Academic freedom has come under growing strain worldwide. To study whether and how academics respond to political pressure, we exploit a natural experiment: the publication in early 2025 of a "blacklist" of words flagged by the U.S. government. We find that the release of this list led to a sharp reduction in the use of these flagged words among economists at universities that rely heavily on federal funding, relative to scholars from institutions that are less dependent on federal funding or based in the UK. The drop is driven by content related to gender, race, and environment. We show that changes are not simply semantic but reflect actual paper content and that neither the individual funding status nor time-invariant author characteristics are driving the effects. We also document interesting heterogeneous effects by department quality and author gender and ethnicity. Our findings are consistent with the idea that scholars respond strongly to political pressure.

Keywords: Censorship; Science; Academic Freedom; Science Funding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 I23 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sog
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Working Paper: Science under Threat? A Natural Experiment in Economics (2026)
Working Paper: Science under Threat? A Natural Experiment in Economics (2026)
Working Paper: Science under Threat? A Natural Experiment in Economics (2026)
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