IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mdl/mdlpap/0806.html

Economists, Incentives, Judgement and Empirical Work

Author

Listed:
  • Dave Colander

Abstract

This paper asks the question: Why has the “general-to-specific” cointegrated VAR approach as developed in Europe had only limited success in the US as a tool for doing empirical macroeconomics, where what might be called a “theory comes first” approach dominates? The reason this paper highlights is the incompatibility of the European approach with the US focus on the journal publication metric for advancement. Specifically, the European “general-to specific” cointegrated VAR approach requires researcher judgment to be part of the analysis, and the US focus on a journal publication metric discourages such research methods. The US “theory comes first” approach fits much better with the journal publication metric.

Suggested Citation

  • Dave Colander, 2008. "Economists, Incentives, Judgement and Empirical Work," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0806, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mdl:mdlpap:0806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.middlebury.edu/services/econ/repec/mdl/ancoec/0806.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deirdre N. McCloskey & Stephen T. Ziliak, 1996. "The Standard Error of Regressions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 97-114, March.
    2. Cooley, Thomas F & LeRoy, Stephen F, 1981. "Identification and Estimation of Money Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 825-844, December.
    3. Sauer, Raymond D, 1988. "Estimates of the Returns to Quality and Coauthorship in Economic Academia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 855-866, August.
    4. Dewald, William G & Thursby, Jerry G & Anderson, Richard G, 1986. "Replication in Empirical Economics: The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking Project," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 587-603, September.
    5. Colander, David, 1989. "Research on the Economics Profession," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 137-148, Fall.
    6. Kirman, Alan & Dahl, Mogens, 1994. "Economic research in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(3-4), pages 505-522, April.
    7. Leamer, Edward E, 1983. "Let's Take the Con Out of Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 31-43, March.
    8. Colander,David C. & Coats,Alfred William (ed.), 1989. "The Spread of Economic Ideas," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521362337, November.
    9. Terry Plum & David Colander, 2004. "Efficiency, Journal Publishing and Scholarly Research - A Discussion Paper," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0414, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    10. Colander, David, 2003. "The Aging of an Economist," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 157-176, June.
    11. Bruno S. Frey & Reiner Eichenberger, 1993. "American and European Economics and Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 185-193, Fall.
    12. Arthur M. Diamond Jr., 1986. "What is a Citation Worth?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 21(2), pages 200-215.
    13. Julia Campos & Neil R. Ericsson & David F. Hendry, 2005. "General-to-specific modeling: an overview and selected bibliography," International Finance Discussion Papers 838, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Ireland, Peter N., 2004. "A method for taking models to the data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1205-1226, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Richard Holt & J. Barkley Rosser & David Colander, 2011. "The Complexity Era in Economics," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 357-369.
    3. Dalibor Roháč, 2012. "On economists and garbagemen: Reflections on Šťastný (2010)," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 173-183, June.
    4. Ordóñez, Javier & Jusélius, Katarina, 2009. "Balassa-Samuelson and Wage, Price and Unemployment Dynamics in the Spanish Transition to EMU Membership," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 3, pages 1-30.
    5. Spanos, Aris, 2008. "The 'Pre-Eminence of Theory' versus the 'General-to-Specific' Cointegrated VAR Perspectives in Macro-Econometric Modeling," Economics Discussion Papers 2008-25, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Colander, David C., 2009. "Economists, incentives, judgment, and the European CVAR approach to macroeconometrics," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 3, pages 1-21.
    2. David Colander, 2009. "Can European Economics Compete with U.S. Economics? And Should It"," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0902, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    3. Bruno S. Frey, 2021. "Backward‐oriented economics," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 187-195, May.
    4. David Colander, 2000. "New Millennium Economics: How Did It Get This Way, and What Way Is It?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 121-132, Winter.
    5. Bruno S. Frey, 2000. "Was Bewirkt die Volkswirtschaftslehre?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(1), pages 5-33, February.
    6. Bruno Frey, 2006. "How Influential is Economics?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 295-311, June.
    7. Ma, Chao & Li, Yiwei & Guo, Feng & Si, Kao, 2019. "The citation trap: Papers published at year-end receive systematically fewer citations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 667-687.
    8. Bruno Frey, 2005. "Problems with Publishing: Existing State and Solutions," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 173-190, April.
    9. Angelina Keil & Peter Huber, 2004. "„Wo die Luft dünn wird…”– Zur Publikationstätigkeit der Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute Österreichs und Deutschlands," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 5(3), pages 363-375, August.
    10. Jinyoung Kim & Kanghyock Koh, 2014. "Incentives for Journal Editors," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(1), pages 348-371, February.
    11. Bruns, Stephan B. & König, Johannes & Stern, David I., 2019. "Replication and robustness analysis of ‘energy and economic growth in the USA: A multivariate approach’," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 100-113.
    12. Dan Johnson, 1997. "Getting Noticed in Economics: The Determinants of Academic Citations," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 41(1), pages 43-52, March.
    13. Klaus Mohn, 2010. "Autism in Economics? A Second Opinion," Forum for Social Economics, Springer;The Association for Social Economics, vol. 39(2), pages 191-208, July.
    14. Thomas Fullerton & Roberto Tinajero & Martha Barraza de Anda, 2006. "Short-Term Water Consumption Patterns in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 34(4), pages 467-479, December.
    15. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2018. "Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses, and Impacts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(1), pages 115-156, March.
    16. Ana Rute Cardoso & Paulo Guimarães & Klaus F. Zimmermann, 2010. "Trends in Economic Research: An International Perspective," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 479-494, November.
    17. Duvendack, Maren & Palmer-Jones, Richard, 2011. "The microfinance of reproduction and the reproduction of microfinance: understanding the connections between microfinance, empowerment, contraception and fertility in Bangladesh in the 1990s," MPRA Paper 32384, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Chambers, Christopher P. & Miller, Alan D., 2014. "Scholarly influence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 571-583.
    19. Altman, Morris, 2004. "Statistical significance, path dependency, and the culture of journal publication," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 651-663, November.
    20. Stephan B. Bruns & David I. Stern, 2019. "Lag length selection and p-hacking in Granger causality testing: prevalence and performance of meta-regression models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 797-830, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B4 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mdl:mdlpap:0806. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vijaya Wunnava (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.