International Journal for Re-Views in Empirical Economics

We are excited to announce the launch of the Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics (JCRE)!

JCRE replaces and expand upon the International Journal for Re-views in Empirical Economics (IREE) by publishing comments in addition to replications.

By expanding the scope of IREE to include comments, JCRE aims to become the premier journal in economics for research that directly addresses previously published papers.

As before, JCRE does not charge fees for submission or publication and is open access.

David Jaeger (St Andrews) serve as Editor of the JCRE, with Maren Duvendack (East Anglia) and Bob Reed (Canterbury) serving as Coeditors.

JCRE is funded by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the Joachim Herz Foundation.

For more information, please see JCRE’s website. If you are interested in submitting your replication or comment to JCRE, please check out the JCRE-Guidelines for authors!

The editorial team looks forward to receiving your submissions!

The Mental Health Cost of Terrorism. A Replication Study of Kim and Albert Kim (Health Economics, 2018).

by Tyler Smith and Tom Coupé

Abstract
This paper replicates the analysis of Kim and Albert Kim (2018). Kim and Albert Kim (2018) find asizeable and negative impact of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack on various indicators of mentalhealth. Overall, our results confirm the conclusions of Kim and Albert Kim (2018).

» Read this replication study here.
» See a list of all publications in IREE here.

The Labour Market Effects of a Refugee Wave. A Replication Study of Peri and Yasenov (Journal of Human Resources, 2019)

by Michael Christl

Abstract
Peri and Yasenov (2019) exploit a natural experiment, the Mariel boatlift of 1980, to analyse the impact of immigration on wages and other labour market outcomes of natives. The authors find no impact of this (immigrant) labour supply shock on the wages of local workers. These results are heavily discussed in the literature, making it a good example for replication to check the robustness of the findings. This paper analyses the impact of the selection of control variables when choosing the synthetic control group and the influence of the sample choice on the findings of the original study. The replication exercise shows that the original results are very stable to several robustness checks. Even though restricting the analysis to a smaller sample influences the results slightly, there is still no evidence of a significant (negative) impact of the labour supply shock on wages of locals.

» Read this replication study here.
» See a list of all publications in IREE here.

Not Evidence for Baumol’s Cost Disease. A Reply to Atanda and Reed (International Journal for Re-Views in Empirical Economics, 2020).

by Jochen Hartwig

Abstract
In this article Jochen Hartwig replies to Antanda’s and Reed’s replication study published earlier this year (IREE, 2020-1).

» Read the reply here.
» See a list of all publications in IREE here.

Trends in the Gender Wage Gap in the US. A replication study of Blau and Kahn (Journal of Economic Literature 2017)

by Matthias Collischon

Abstract
This note reports that the results using the CPS and PSID from Blau and Kahn (2017) can be reproduced successfully. The authors discuss trends and explanations of the gender wage gap in the United States with data from the CPS and PSID using various decomposition techniques. The authors provide the Stata syntax as well as the CPS and PSID data used in their article as supplementary material online. While the Syntax for the CPS contains one minor mistake (the variable hrwage already existed in another form in the data and needed to be dropped), the syntax for the PSID requires some additional calculations that are not provided in Blau and Kahn’s original files to replicate the results. The syntax files provided as supplementary material to this replication note contain some more intuitive ways to replicate the results and display them, but the results do nevertheless hold up for both the CPS and the PSID. Thus, the results from Blau and Kahn (2017)
are fully reproducible.

» Read this replication study here.
» See a list of all publications in IREE here.

Not Evidence for Baumol’s Cost Disease. A replication study of Hartwig (Journal of Health Economics, 2008)

by Akinwande Atanda and W. Robert Reed

Abstract
In his 2008 Journal of Health Economics paper, Jochen Hartwig claimed that Baumol’s Cost Disease (BCD) theory could explain observed increases in health care expenditures in OECD countries. This paper replicates Hartwig’s results and demonstrates that he tested the wrong hypothesis. When one tests the correct hypothesis, Hartwig’s conclusions are not supported. Rather than providing evidence in favor of BCD, Hartwig’s estimation procedures, when applied correctly, strongly reject BCD as an explanation for health expenditure increases for the OECD data he examined.

» Read this replication study here.
» See a list of all publications in IREE here.