The Publication Incidence of Replications and Critical Commentary in Economics

Replication is not common in the economics literature. No replications were found in a sampling of 1,698 papers from three major economics journals. Only 5.4 percent were replications with extensions, and they accounted for only four percent of journal space devoted to research reports. The replications with extensions generally produced results that conflicted with the original works. Of the 92 extensions published, 65.2 percent conflicted with the earlier results, and only 20 percent provided full confirmation.