Introducing the Replication Studies section

Spatial Economic Analysis is pleased to announce a new section, Replication Studies, devoted to short papers that replicate or extend published empirical results and discuss their sensitivity to relevant changes in the model, estimation method and/or interpretation. Empirical studies are part of the backbone of the social sciences because they help to support theories and form policy recommendations. In recent decades there has been a 50% increase in the share of published empirical studies in comparison with articles focused on economic theory and econometric theory. In addition, empirical papers receive more citations than theoretical papers (Angrist et al., 2017). It is 35 years since Dewald et al. (1986) emphasized the importance of replications in empirical research. Out of a sample of 54 published papers in the Journal ofMoney, Credit and Banking in 1980, they found only eight (15%) were replicable without problems and 14 (26%) were incomplete. More recently, Vilhuber (2020) found that about 30% of replication attempts fail. Still, replication studies are not common. Empirical work from well-published and highly cited articles or top five journals is more likely to be reproduced (Berry et al., 2017; Hamermesh, 2007), but the number of replication studies for even well-published works is small. Berry et al. (2017) find that only 3.5% of the papers that cited empirical works published in the American Economic Review in 2010 are replications. Replications in regional science, spatial economics and economic geography are also scarce and unsatisfactory to our knowledge. By contrast, in experimental economics and financial economics, two subfields within the economics literature, replications are more common (Ingerslev et al., 2021 Maniadis et al., 2017). The literature suggests two reasons for the lack of replication studies (Dewald et al., 1986; Galiani et al., 2017; Vilhuber, 2020):