The Reproducibility of Economics Research: A Case Study

Published reproductions or replications of economics research are rare. However, recent years have seen increased recognition of the important role of replication in the scientific endeavor. We describe and present the results of a large reproduction exercise in which we assess the reproducibility of research articles published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics over the last decade. 69 of 162 eligible replication attempts successfuly replicated the article’s analysis 42.6%. A further 68 (42%) were at least partially successful. A total of 98 out of 303 (32.3%) relied on confidential or proprietary data, and were thus not reproducible by this project. We also conduct several bibliometric analyses of reproducible vs. non-reproducible articles.