Can We Test for Bias in Scientific Peer-Review?

Science rests upon the reliability of peer review. This paper suggests a way to test for bias. It is able to avoid the fallacy -- one seen in the popular press and the research literature -- that to measure discrimination it is sufficient to study averages within two populations. The paper’s contribution is primarily methodological, but I apply it, as an illustration, to data from the field of economics. No scientific bias or favoritism is found (although the Journal of Political Economy discriminates against its own Chicago authors). The test’s methodology is applicable in most scholarly disciplines

Commentary on three papers

Let me start with “The Slump, the Recovery, and the New Normal” by Edmund Phelps. With this stone, I would like to hope that I am killing two birds: Ned Phelps’s paper is, in part, a non-mathematical version of the “Macroeconomic Effects of Over-Investment in Housing in an Aggregative Model of Economic Activity”, written by Hian Teck Hoon. The first paper is in words; the second has some words and, in parts, some Hamiltonians. Both papers are extraordinarily stimulating. Both bear on the issues of the day. A key thing to say, and admire, about the first paper is the fact that in a fairly readable way — not that it will be an effortless read for the non-economist — it addresses the great macroeconomic issue of our time. Why did the remarkable financial crisis of the first decade of the 2000s come about, and what happens next? Phelps begins by pointing out that we experienced a major contraction before in the post-war era, namely, during the severe downturn that began around the mid 1970s and took unemployment levels to a frightening point seen by few living worker (in my country, the UK, unemployment was 12% of the labour force by the year 1983). That crisis took place as I was in the middle of college; it encouraged in me an interest in economics

Happiness and economic performance

If a nation's economic performance improves, how much extra happiness does that buy its citizens? Most public debate assumes -- without real evidence -- that the answer is a lot. This paper examines the question by using information on well-being in Western countries. The data are of four kinds: on reported happiness, on reported life satisfaction, on reported job satisfaction, and on the number of suicides. These reveal patterns that are not visible to the anecdotal eye. In industrialized countries, well-being appears to rise as real national income grows. But the rise is so small as to be sometimes almost undetectable. Unemployment, however, seems to be a large source of unhappiness. This suggests that governments ought to be trying to reduce the amount of joblessness in the economy. In a country that is already rich, policy aimed instead at raising economic growth may be of comparatively little value

On the Curvature of the Reporting Function from Objective Reality to Subjective Feelings

I suggest the idea of a reporting function, r(.), from reality to feelings. The ‘happiness’ literature claims we have demonstrated diminishing marginal utility of income. I show not, and that knowing r(.)’s curvature is crucial. A quasi-experiment on heights is studied.height, diminishing marginal utility, money, concavity

The value to the environmental movement of the new literature on the economics of happiness

Many environmentalists have not yet discovered and understood the value to them of a new research literature. That literature is the economics of happiness. It offers a potentially important tool for future policy debate. In particular, this literature offers a defensible way to calculate the costs and benefits of the true happiness value of ‘green’ variables – and to weigh those against the happiness value to people of extra income and consumption. Some of the latest research findings turn out to accord well with environmentalists’ intuitions: green variables seem to have large direct effects on human well-being; society would arguably be better to concentrate more on environmental aims and less on monetary or materialistic ones; greater consumption of things in Western society cannot be expected to make us much happier

Emotional Prosperity and the Stiglitz Commission

This paper argues – in line with the proposals of the recent Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress – that we should now be measuring a nation's emotional prosperity rather than its economic prosperity (that is, we ought to focus on the level of mental well-being not the number of pounds in people's bank accounts). The paper reviews recent ideas in this field. It also describes seven recent studies that, worryingly, suggest that emotional prosperity may be declining through time. For labour-market specialists, a key question for future research is how much this downward trend can be traced back to increased pressures in working life. That question currently remains open.well-being, biomarkers, GHQ, happiness, Easterlin paradox

Emotional Prosperity and the Stiglitz Commission

This paper argues -- in line with the proposals of the recent Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress -- that we should now be measuring a nation’s emotional prosperity rather than its economic prosperity (that is, we ought to focus on the level of mental well-being not the number of pounds in people’s bank accounts). The paper reviews recent ideas in this field. It also describes seven recent studies that, worryingly, suggest that emotional prosperity may be declining through time. For labour-market specialists, a key question for future research is how much this downward trend can be traced back to increased pressures in working life. That question currently remains open.Well-being ; biomarkers ; GHQ ; happiness ; Easterlin paradox JEL Classification: I1 ; I3

World-Leading Research and its Measurement

Journalists and others have asked me whether the favourable RAE 2008 results for UK economics are believable. This is a fair question. It also opens up a broader and more important one: how can we design a bibliometric method to assess the quality (rather than merely quantity) of a nation’s science? To try to address this, I examine objective data on the world’s most influential economics articles. I find that the United Kingdom performed reasonably well over the 2001-2008 period. Of 450 genuinely world-leading journal articles, the UK produced 10% of them -- and was the source of the most-cited article in each of the Journal of Econometrics, the International Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Rand Journal of Economics, and of the second most-cited article in the Journal of Health Economics. Interestingly, more than a quarter of these world-leading UK articles came from outside the best-known half-dozen departments. Thus the modern emphasis on ‘top’ departments and the idea that funding should be concentrated in a few places may be mistaken. Pluralism may help to foster iconoclastic ideas.Science ; evaluation ; peer-review ; citations ; research assessment exercise.