Economics & the Economy
- Environmental Economics: “We will never be a science so long as this crap persists.”
MarkThoma at Economist’s View takes the AER to task for basing article selection on prestige and for failing to publish corrections to flawed articles–if they are written by the current Chair of the Fed.
It was awhile ago, but I once discovered an error in a paper in the AER (the author used the level of the price level rather than the log). When I pointed out the error, the author — who is very well known (and now the Fed chair) — wrote a letter to the editor of the AER arguing that it didn’t materially affect the results, and subsequently our note pointing out the error was rejected (much like Reinhart and Rogoff argue that their results are not materially affected by their error, but I think the error mattered as it weakens the case in the Bernanke and Blinder paper, but even if it doesn’t wrong results should be corrected — the results cannot be replicated based on the information in the paper). The prestigious author won out over lowly me, and to this day there is a wrong result in a table in a influential paper in the debate over how to conduct monetary policy.
- Economist’s View: ‘Everyone Has the Same Chance at the AER, Right?’
- The economics of enough | Business | guardian.co.uk