On the use of Excel for reproducible tables
I sometimes see researchers doing much copy-pasting between output from Stata/R/MATLAB and Excel, to create tables. This is a lot of work, the source of many...
Blog posts
2025
2024
How to respond to data provider requests for data removal (take-down requests)
The AEA Data and Code Availability Policy asks that authors provide access to all data used in a published paper. But it also acknowledges that there are cas...
On the use and reuse of within-project code
We often see researchers handle variants of their analysis by copying and pasting code, or by copying code files into separate directories, and making only m...
On the use and redistribution of data
Many researchers are confused by the difference between “use” and “(re-)distribution” of data. In a nutshell, just because you are able to freely use the dat...
Random notes from the AMAs
In the AMAs (see past and future AMAs), we talked about many things. No transcript, but here’s a raw dump of the various websites that were used.
AEJ Best Papers 2024 and replication packages
The annual American Economic Journal (AEJ) Best Paper Awards highlight the best paper published in each of the American Economic Journals: Applied Economics,...
Examples of replication packages for research conducted in FSRDCs
I have been asked a few times about guidance for replication packages that use confidential data in research data centers, e.g., the Federal Statistical Res...
NDAs, NDAs, and NDAs: How to describe access to data that cannot be published
I was recently forwarded a question from a data librarian discussion list, and invited to respond to the question of “example language” for a data access des...
2023
NDAs, DUAs in the verification process
Toni Whited (EIC of Journal of Financial Economics) had the following question on the ex-bird site: Econ and finance journals are getting their acts toge...
RESOLVED - Access to replication packages retrieval and deposit interrupted
THIS HAS BEEN RESOLVED. Please deposit as usual! The AEA uses the openICPSR repository for the deposit and dissemination of replication packages. On Sun...
Details on how to update a replication package post-publication
I have previously posted about how to update a replication package, after initial publication. We do get more than a dozen such updates a year (see my annual...
Some remarks on challenges and solutions when conducting reproducibility checking for two recent AEJ:Applied articles
I wanted to briefly discuss the challenges when conducting data provenance and reproducibility checks, for complex and highly interesting articles, with the ...
The oldest replication package, overall?
After our recent discussion about the oldest AEA replication package, I navigated over to the really old archive at the Journal of Applied Econometrics. Surp...
The oldest AEA replication package
We were recently discussing among data editors what the oldest replication package (in Econ and Political Science) might be.
DCAS v1.0 Compliance Self-Assessment
On 2022-12-15, various data editors, including myself, launched the Data and Code Availability Standard (DCAS). In this post, I will do a self-assessment o...
2022
Launching DCAS
The data editors of the journals of the American Economic Association1, of the Royal Economic Society2, the Review of Economic Studies, the Canadian Journa...
What is this LICENSE thing
The template README required by various econ journals asks for a statement about the rights to RE-distribute data. Many economists are confused by this: “But...
A short example of how to update a replication package
The AEA Data and Code Availability does not just require that authors publish a replication package - it also encourages authors to improve upon the replicat...
Some remarks on coding when data are confidential
Back in the fall, I made a few notes regarding how to prepare replication packages when data are confidential (here). What I did not address, and what comes ...
2021
Use of Docker for Reproducibility in Economics
In reproducibility verification, a common scenario is the author response “but-it-works-on-my-machine”. Finding common environments is important in such situ...
How to prepare replication packages for papers that used confidential data
On a tangent: we get this question regularly - how to prepare replication packages for papers that used confidential data (here: by statistical agencies). A ...
When a reproducibility check turns into a replication exercise
I wanted to highlight a particular interesting article in the latest AEJ: Microeconomics from the perspective of replicability and reproducibility.
Software, code, and repositories
A short thread on software, code, versioning, citation, and repositories. Only very few AEA articles reference Github/Gitlab/Bitbucket repositories. More sho...
File paths in statistical software
A short thread (PSA) on a FOC (frequently occurring problem) that shouldn’t be one: file paths in statistical software.
What data to provide
What do we mean by “data”?
Reproducible GIS
A note on reproducible GIS by economists: it’s mostly absent. Here are some tips.
A Day in the Life of a Data Editor
I wanted to illustrate the range of the various topics that a Data Editor might face, by taking a fairly random day (2021-01-29) and listing all the various ...
Follow-up to Fireside Chat
In this post, I’ll pick up questions that have been asked over Twitter or during the 2021-01-19 Fireside chat, in long form (Twitter is not always the best m...
A discussion about various things
Moved to later post.
2020
Release of a template README
We have released the first version of a template README for social sciences at https://social-science-data-editors.github.io/template_README/.
An example of reproducibility checking when data is restricted-access
I wanted to highlight a recently (2020-04-30) published article in the AEJ:Economic Policy as an example of reproducibility checking when data is restricted-...