Quality Control in Economics
利用三大经济学期刊数据，分析编辑筛选过程，发现论文质量更多依赖作者事前投入，而非事后控制。
This paper analyzes the editorial screening process in economics, employing data from the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics . We examine three issues: the decline of critical commentary in economics, the increased referencing behavior of authors, and the decline in the citation of economic research. We find that there is empirical evidence in favor of the idea that these trends are mostly due to more ex ante investment by authors in their papers and less need for ex post quality control. We appreciate helpful comments received from William Shughart, John Sophocleus, and the editors of Kyklos . The usual caveat applies.