A New Mechanism to Alleviate the Crises of Confidence in Science - With an Application to the Public Goods Game

Luigi Butera, Philip Grossman, Daniel Houser, John List and Marie Claire Villeval

No 03-20, Monash Economics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Creation of empirical knowledge in economics has taken a dramatic turn in the past few decades. One feature of the new research landscape is the nature and extent to which scholars generate data. Today, in nearly every field the experimental approach plays an increasingly crucial role in testing theories and informing organizational deci- sions. Whereas there is much to appreciate about this revolution, recently a credibility crisis has taken hold across the social sciences, arguing that an important component of Fischer (1935)’s tripod has not been fully embraced: replication. Indeed, while the importance of replications is not debatable scientifically, current incentives are not sufficient to encourage replications from the individual researcher’s perspective. We propose a novel mechanism that promotes replications by leveraging mutually benefi- cial gains between scholars and editors. We develop a model capturing the trade-offs involved in seeking independent replications before submission of a paper to journals. We showcase our method via an investigation of the effects of Knightian uncertainty on cooperation rates in public goods games, a pervasive and yet largely unexplored feature in the literature.

Keywords: Replication; science; public goods; uncertainty; experiment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 93 pages
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Related works:
Working Paper: A New Mechanism to Alleviate the Crises of Confi dence in Science With An Application to the Public Goods Game (2022)
Working Paper: A New Mechanism to Alleviate the Crises of Confidence in Science - With an Application to the Public Goods Game (2020)
Working Paper: A New Mechanism to Alleviate the Crises of Con?dence in Science With An Application to the Public Goods Game (2020)
Working Paper: A New Mechanism to Alleviate the Crises of Confidence in Science-With An Application to the Public Goods Game (2020)
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