Inducing Greater Transparency: Towards the Establishment of Ethical Rules for Econometrics

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Joint Statistical Meetings and the George Mason Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economics in Economics. We have benefitted from the comments of William Seltzer and Margo Anderson and, especially, this journal's referee. The paper began with a conversation between Levy and Paul David at the Economics of Science Conference at Notre Dame in April 1997 and was greatly stimulated by Perci Diaconis's as yet unpublished 1998 IMS Lecture. Preliminary versions were presented at the George Washington University Economics Seminar, the 1999 Canadian Law and Economics Association meetings, the George Mason Statistics Department Seminar, and the University of Alberta Econometrics Seminar. We have benefitted from comments from James Buchanan, Adolf Buse, Roger Congleton, Tyler Cowen, Mark Crain, Don Gantz, Jim Gentle, Bruce Kobayashi, David Meiselman, John Miller, David Ribar, Robert Tollison, and other participants. The command files to replicate the Monte Carlo study are available upon request. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 103–114. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eej.9050007