Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/304408 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
New Working Paper Series No. 348
Publisher: 
University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, Chicago, IL
Abstract: 
We conduct a survey of economists and a representative sample of Americans to infer the reduction in the perceived value of a paper when its authors have conflicts of interest (CoI), i.e., they have financial, professional, or ideological stakes in the outcome of the results. On average, a CoI decreases trust in the conclusions of an economics paper by 30%. This reduction in trust reflects a combination of the frequency of conflicted papers and the bias of papers when they are conflicted. To isolate the second term, we introduce a key construct: the CoI Discount, which measures the reduction in the value of a conflicted paper relative to a nonconflicted one. We show that, on average, conflicted papers are worth less than half of non-conflicted ones, though this effect varies significantly depending on the nature of the conflict. The discount is more pronounced when the conflict involves the interest of a private rather than a public entity. Restricted data access also leads to a substantial discount. We validate our survey based estimates by comparing them to actual biases observed in conflicted papers within the economics and medical literature.
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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