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on Sociology of Economics |
| By: | Costanza Naguib-Stettler |
| Abstract: | In 2018, the Journal of Development Economics introduced a pre-results review track, allowing prospective empirical projects to be assessed before the realization and reporting of their results. This paper studies whether this change in the editorial process affected the prevalence of p-hacking and/or publication bias in articles published in the Journal of Development Economics relative to comparable journals in the same period. |
| Keywords: | p-hacking, publication bias, pre-results review, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | A11 A14 C13 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp2603 |
| By: | Manuel Bagues; Milan Makany; Giulia Vattuone; Natalia Zinovyeva |
| Abstract: | We study how faculty promotion decisions shape women's careers and the academic pipeline, using data from 4, 000 Spanish university departments across all disciplines. We identify exogenous variation in promotions using the random assignment of evaluators to promotion committees between 2002 and 2008: applicants whose committees included a co-author or colleague were significantly more likely to qualify for promotion. We document two main findings. First, failing to obtain tenure has asymmetrically lasting consequences for women. Those who narrowly miss tenure are 57 percentage points less likely to be tenured fifteen years later, compared to 29 percentage points for men. Second, when women do obtain tenure, the effects extend well beyond their own careers: promoting a woman to Associate Professor increases female faculty by 1.5 members after 15 years, leads to six additional female PhD graduates over the following decade, and raises the number who subsequently remain in academia and reach tenured positions. |
| Keywords: | Academic Promotions, Women in Academia, Natural Experiment |
| JEL: | I23 J16 J44 M51 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26092 |
| By: | Robert Böhm; Jürgen Huber; Michael Kirchler |
| Abstract: | The open science movement has made life considerably harder for researchers committed to the traditional craft of producing tidy, statistically significant stories from inconveniently untidy data that the publishing system still finds deeply attractive. Preregistration, data sharing, Registered Reports, and growing expectations of reproducibility have introduced unwelcome friction into once-fluid research workflows. In this satirical tutorial, we offer a service to the creatively empirical by documenting how significance may still be massaged in an era increasingly hostile to methodological improvisation. We identify three broad strategies. First, preregistration can be used less as a constraint than as a menu, allowing vagueness, selective reporting, and preregistration forks to preserve analytic flexibility. Second, exploratory findings can be dressed in confirmatory clothing by leaving the boundary between the two unmarked. Third, open science can be practiced opaquely, such that materials, data, and codes are technically available while remaining functionally unreachable. We then describe emerging threats to these strategies, including stricter preregistration standards, reproducibility checks, and mandatory study registration. Reassuringly for the creatively empirical, most of these reforms remain unlikely, as they would require meaningful changes to publishing incentives and coordinated effort among scientists, universities, and journals that academia rarely produces except in mission statements. |
| Keywords: | open science, transparency, reproducibility, HARKing, p-hacking |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2026-03 |
| By: | Anna Stansbury; Kyra Rodriguez |
| Abstract: | Unlike gender or race, class background is rarely a focus of research on career progression, or of DEI efforts in elite occupations. Should it be? In this paper we document a large class gap in career progression in one occupation - US tenure-track academia - using parental education to proxy for class background. First-generation college graduates are 10% less likely to be tenured at an R1, are tenured at institutions ranked 11% lower, earn 3% less, and report 5% lower job satisfaction, than their former PhD classmates (from the same institution and field) with a parent with a non-PhD graduate degree. Neither selection out of academia nor different preferences explain this gap; differential research productivity also plays little role. Instead, likely drivers are differences in cultural and social capital. We also find a class gap in career progression for PhDs who work in industry, suggesting this phenomenon generalizes outside academia. |
| Keywords: | class; socioeconomic background; mobility; discrimination |
| JEL: | J7 J44 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26042 |
| By: | OECD |
| Abstract: | Research assessment frameworks play a central role in shaping the priorities, direction, and culture of scientific research. Yet there are growing concerns over their misalignment with evolving policy priorities, public expectations, and new demands from science. Over-reliance on narrow performance measures has generated perverse incentives and undesirable behaviours. At the same time, these measures tend to undervalue critical research practices and outputs, such as collaboration, openness, societal engagement, and support to policy making. This paper provides a system-level overview of research assessment, highlighting key tensions, mapping the main actors and drivers, and identifying a set of common reform principles through a comparative review of the literature. It makes the case for developing new assessment frameworks that are better aligned with the evolving expectations and demands placed on science. |
| Keywords: | Open science, Research assessment, Research evaluation frameworks, Science policy |
| JEL: | I23 O30 O38 D02 |
| Date: | 2026–04–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:stiaaa:2026/7-en |