A New Mechanism to Alleviate the Crises of Confidence in Science With An Application to the Public Goods Game

Abstract

Recently a credibility crisis has taken hold across the social sciences, arguing that a component of Fischer (1935)’s tripod has not been fully embraced: replication. The importance of replications is not debatable scientifically, but researchers’ incentives are not sufficient to encourage replications. We analyze a novel mechanism promoting replications through beneficial gains between scholars and editors. We highlight the tradeoffs involved in seeking independent replications before submission to journals, and demonstrate the operation of this method via an investigation of the effects of Knightian uncertainty on cooperation in public goods games, a pervasive but largely unexplored feature in the literature.

Keywords: Replication, science, public goods, uncertainty, experiment

JEL Classification: A11, C18, C92, D82