Best practices for reproducibility, research assessment reforms, and implications for experimental economists

Scientists are under pressure to adhere to best practices for enhancing reproducibility, such as preregistration and data sharing. This tendency will certainly increase with the unfolding reforms in researcher assessment, and it brings new challenges. Heterogeneity in the amenability of different domains to reproducibility-enhancing practices raises an issue of possible inequity: will different scientific domains bear disparate adjustment costs? Is this justified and efficient? To illustrate the problem, we consider recent concerns expressed by experimental economists, namely that they are unfairly burdened relative to other economics domains. Our analysis indicates that such fairness concerns may have merit, but only insofar as research assessment does not fully internalize the costs of adjusting to new practices.