This study challenges two core conventional meta-analysis methods: fixed effect and random effects. We show how and explain why an unrestricted weighted least squares estimator is superior to conventional random-effects meta-analysis when there is publication (or small-sample) bias and better...

Our study revisits and challenges two core conventional meta-regression models: the prevalent use of ‘mixed-effects’ or random-effects meta-regression analysis (RE-MRA) and the correction of standard errors that defines fixed-effects meta-regression analysis (FE-MRA). We show how and explain...

This study investigates the small-sample performance of meta-regression methods for detecting and estimating genuine empirical effects in research literatures tainted by publication selection. Publication selection exists when editors, reviewers or researchers have a preference for statistically...

There is growing concern and mounting evidence of selectivity in empirical economics. Most empirical economic literatures have a skewed (or truncated) distribution of results. The aim of this paper is to explore the links between publication selectivity and theory competition. In research areas...

Card and Krueger’s (1995) meta-analysis of the employment effects of minimum wages challenged existing theory. Unfortunately, their meta-analysis confused publication bias with the absence of a genuine empirical effect. Recently developed meta-analysis methods corroborate that Card and...

Card and Krueger’s (1995a) meta-analysis of the employment effects of minimum wages challenged existing theory. Unfortunately, their meta-analysis confused publication selection with the absence of a genuine empirical effect. We apply recently developed meta-analysis methods to 64 US minimum...

Conventional practice is to draw inferences from all available data and research results, even though there is ample evidence to suggest that empirical literatures suffer from publication selection bias. When a scientific literature is plagued by such bias, a simple discarding of the vast...

Directors’ pay and corporate governance continue to generate public outrage and calls for reform. Our meta-regression analysis of all comparable UK pay-for-performance estimates finds little, if any, meaningful association between directors’ pay and corporate performance. However, there is...

Meta-regression analysis (MRA) provides an empirical framework through which to integrate disparate economic research results, filter out likely publication bias, and explain their wide variation using socio-economic and econometric explanatory variables (Stanley and Jarrell, 1989, Stanley,...

The magnitude of the value of a statistical life (VSL) is critical to the evaluation of many health and safety initiatives. To date, the large and rigorous VSL research literature has not explicitly accommodated publication selectivity bias (i.e., the reduced probability that insignificant or...