EI Feature: Symposium on Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics Part I and Part II
Part I
Reproducibility and replicability are cornerstones of scientific progress, ensuring that findings can withstand scrutiny and that results hold under varied analyses. In economics, these principles support a self-correcting system, fostering more reliable empirical research and more robust foundations for policy design. However, despite the recognition of replication's importance, many empirical studies, particularly non-experimental ones, lack rigorous replication. This symposium of Economic Inquiry aims to address this gap, presenting new research that underscores the need for reproduction and replication, particularly in non-experimental studies, and proposes innovative approaches to overcoming the practical challenges of replicability in economics. Due to the volume of high-quality submissions we received, we have divided this symposium into two parts. This first part highlights key methodological advances and remaining challenges that contribute to the broader conversation on reproducibility and replicability in economics. A forthcoming second part will continue this exploration, further showcasing reproductions and replications of seminal and well-cited articles.
Part II
This is the second of our two part symposium on Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics. The set of papers in this volume span a vast range of topics and empirical methodologies in economics. This diversity makes a clear point about the importance of these issues in every single field of economics. In order for the discipline to be able to claim validity in our work, we need to collectively submit it to continual scrutiny of this nature to determine when results are reproducible or replicable, and if not to determine why not and how we can do better in the future. The goal is to make certain that economics functions as a self-correcting science. The work in this symposium provides a number of important lessons on these issues by noting where and when some prominent papers do or do not survive replication checks. These papers also collectively help us learn more about what replication science is about and how we might properly evaluate the success or failure of papers in being replicable.
Part I First published: April 2025 issue
Part II First published: January 2026 issue