The Conflict-of-Interest Discount in the Marketplace of Ideas

John Barrios, Filippo Lancieri, Joshua Levy, Shashank Singh, Tommaso Valletti and Luigi Zingales

No 33645, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study how conflicts of interest (CoI)—defined as financial, professional, or ideological stakes held by authors—affect perceived credibility in economics research. Using a randomized controlled survey of both economists and a representative sample of the U.S. public, we find that the presence of a CoI reduces trust in a paper’s findings by 28% on average, with substantial heterogeneity across conflict types. We develop a model in which this reduction in trust reflects both the prevalence of conflicted papers and the expected bias conditional on conflict. To isolate the latter, we introduce the CoI Discount: the perceived value of a conflicted paper relative to an otherwise identical, non-conflicted one. We estimate an average CoI Discount of 39%, implying that conflicted papers are valued at just 61% of non-conflicted ones. We validate these survey-based estimates through three complementary exercises: an empirical analysis of actual citation and disclosure patterns in economics, a meta-analysis of evidence from the medical literature, and simulations using large-language models. Our findings highlight a persistent credibility gap that is not eliminated by current disclosure practices and suggest a broader challenge for scientific trust in the presence of author conflicts.

JEL-codes: A11 A14 B59 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04
Note: CF IO POL
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