Coding Style and Practice : Are All Programs Equal?

Research in applied economics requires the use of specialised software for data analysis. The scripts or code for these software routines can be written in many ways however it has recently become standard procedure for these scripts to be submitted along with the research document to allow for the replication of results. Often scripts written for one project serve as the basis for future projects that employ the same data and/or techniques of analysis. In addition, it has become increasingly common for economic research to be performed by teams that need to share scripts. For these reasons it is important to follow style guidelines so that the details of the analysis can be followed and verified.This paper presents a style guide for coding in three commonly used software packages used for data analysis in applied economic research and we also perform an analysis of code used for papers published in the 2020 volume of the American Economic Review and the Papers and Proceedings of the 2020 meeting of the American Economic Association