A Tool for Distributed Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Scientists and policy-makers in many fields struggle to synthesize the quickly evolving state of empirical work. We create an online tool for collecting, analyzing, combining, and communicating a wide range of empirical results, and supporting their integration into computational models. Scientists engaged in empirical research or in the review of others' work can input rich numerical and analytical descriptions of empirically estimated relationships. The tool incorporates them into a new database of statistical results, which researchers can expand both in depth (by providing additional results that describing existing relationships) and breadth (by adding new relationships).

Keywords: meta-analysis, crowd-sourcing, empirical estimates

JEL Classification: C11, C52, C87