Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/207319 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12493
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In February 2015, the editors of eight health economics journals sent out an editorial statement which aims to reduce the extent of specification searching and reminds referees to accept studies that: "have potential scientific and publication merit regardless of whether such studies' empirical findings do or do not reject null hypotheses". Guided by a pre-analysis, we test whether the editorial statement decreased the extent of publication bias. Our differences-in-differences estimates suggest that the statement decreased the proportion of tests rejecting the null hypothesis by 18 percentage points. Our findings suggest that incentives may be aligned to promote more transparent research.
Subjects: 
research in economics
pre-analysis plan
specification searching
publication bias
incentives to publish
JEL: 
A11
C13
C44
I10
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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