Rejected: Career concerns in the refereeing process

Ascension Andina-Diaz, José A. García-Martínez () and Nektaria Glynia ()
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José A. García-Martínez: Dpto. Estudios Económicos y Financieros, Universidad Miguel Hernández
Nektaria Glynia: Dep. Economics, University of Cyprus

No 2024-03, Working Papers from Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center

Abstract: We analyze the effect of career concerns on the refereeing process. We consider a journal editor and two referees who may differ in reputation and ability. A referee’s reputation is public information, while a referee’s ability is private information. We identify an incentive for low-ability referees to reject good papers —a phenomenon we call over-rejection— and find that this incentive increases with the referee’s reputation. We show that over-rejection decreases with competition, referee homogeneity, and the anonymity of the refereeing process. In contrast to low-ability experts, high-ability referees are truthful in equilibrium. Since a referee with a higher reputation is ex-ante more likely to be high-ability, our results suggest that the probability of rejection is inverted U-shaped in the referee’s reputation. We empirically test this result. We use data from Card and DellaVigna (2020) for submissions to four top economic journals in the period 2003-2013 and use the referee’s publication record as a proxy for the referee’s reputation. We find that the probability of sending a negative recommendation increases with the referee’s reputation in the early stages of the career and decreases thereafter, suggesting an inverted U-shape form in line with our theoretical results.

Keywords: Career concerns: refereeing process; reputation; ability; endogenous transparency; competition; information transmission. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic and nep-sog
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