Pre-registration for Economists: exhaustive templates for primary and secondary data

Pre-registration is gaining prominence in the quest for more credible research in economics. However, current inconsistent standards and the absence of economics-specific resources increase researchers' degrees of freedom and pose challenges for reviewers and editors in evaluating pre-registration quality. To address this, I introduce two comprehensive pre-registration templates for economic studies using primary or secondary data. First, I present pre-registration and discuss current challenges in economics. Second, I identify optimal pre-registration research scenarios to help researchers select the most suitable research format. Third, I introduce the templates, which compile recent advancements in open science across multiple disciplines and serve as practical resources for researchers, reviewers, and editors. The templates surpass existing alternatives by offering a more structured framework to minimize degrees of freedom and document pre-registration deviations. Ultimately, the goal is to provide a unique and standardized resource for economists to enhance and facilitate pre-registration. Lastly, current limitations are discussed.