wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

growth with endogenous migration hump and the multiple dynamically interacting effects of aid in poor developing countries we show empirically that aid given to poor developing countries enhances growth and reduces emigration once several dynamically interacting effects of aid are taken into account in a system of equations we estimate equations for net immigration flows as a share of the labour force and gdp per capita growth and also for all their regressors including remittances and official development aid we use dynamic panel data methods for a sample of poor countries with gdp per capita below 1200 2000 for which aid is about 9 5 of gdp the partial effects in these regressions are as follows remittances enhance net immigration savings public expenditure on education and growth but reduce tax revenues all as a share of gdp net immigration enhances labour force growth and the savings ratio official development aid decreases the savings ratio and the per capita gdp growth rate but it increases investment public expenditure on education and literacy and also labour force growth then we integrate all equations to a dynamic system and run a simulation the result is an endogenous migration hump with several peaks in a counterfactual simulation we double aid with the result that for more than a hundred years migration is reduced and the gdp per capita is enhanced because the positive effects of aid on investment and education dominate the negative direct effects of aid on growth and the unfavourable effects on savings tax revenues and labour force growth

model averaging and its use in economics the method of model averaging has become an important tool to deal with model uncertainty for example in situations where a large amount of different theories exist as are common in economics model averaging is a natural and formal response to model uncertainty in a bayesian framework and most of the paper deals with bayesian model averaging the important role of the prior assumptions in these bayesian procedures is highlighted in addition frequentist model averaging methods are also discussed numerical methods to implement these methods are explained and i point the reader to some freely available computational resources the main focus is on uncertainty regarding the choice of covariates in normal linear regression models but the paper also covers other more challenging settings with particular emphasis on sampling models commonly used in economics applications of model averaging in economics are reviewed and discussed in a wide range of areas among which growth economics production modelling finance and forecasting macroeconomic quantities

do remittances induce inflation fresh evidence from developing countries the goal of this article is to examine the determinants of inflation in both the short run and the long run for 54 developing countries using a panel data set covering the 1995 2004 period apart from the commonly used economic determinants of inflation we model the impact of remittances and institutional variables on inflation using the arellano and bond panel dynamic estimator and the arellano and bover and the blundell and bond system generalized method of moments estimator we find evidence that in developing countries remittances generate inflation the effect of remittances on inflation is more pronounced in the long run moreover we find that openness debt current account deficits the agricultural sector and the short term u s interest rate have a positive effect on inflation we also find that improvements in democracy reduce inflation

did fdi really cause chinese economic growth a meta analysis summary foreign direct investment fdi has been linked to economic growth in a number of countries productivity spillovers at the firm level have been identified as a key element in the process by which fdi stimulates economic growth moreover there is evidence of fdi related productivity spillovers in china whether these spillovers have been of sufficient size to affect growth at the aggregate level however is an empirical question we apply meta analysis to the corresponding empirical literature to find an answer our main finding is that the effect of fdi on chinese economic growth is much smaller than one would expect from a naive aggregation of existing estimates publication bias and a profusion of estimates based on less preferred study and sample characteristics have served to inflate observed estimates once these effects are accounted for the estimated effect of fdi on chinese economic growth is reduced to statistical insignificance this suggests that the cause s of the chinese economic miracle likely lie elsewhere

macroeconomic impacts of fdi in transition economies a meta analysis summary in this paper we conduct a meta analysis of the literature that empirically examines the impact of foreign direct investment fdi on economic growth in central and eastern europe and the former soviet union we found that existing studies indicate a growth enhancing effect of fdi in the region as a whole the results of our meta regression analysis suggest that the effect size and statistical significance of the reported estimates strongly depend on study conditions we also found that the relevant studies fail to present genuine evidence of a non zero fdi effect more research is necessary to identify the true effect

education and economic growth a meta regression analysis summary this paper surveys the literature which examines the effect of education on economic growth specifically we apply meta regression analysis to 57 studies with 989 estimates and show that there is substantial publication selection bias toward a positive impact of education on growth once we account for this the genuine growth effect of education is not homogeneous across studies but varies according to several factors specifically it is attributed to differences in education measurement and study characteristics mainly model specification as well as type of data used and the quality of research outlets where studies are published e g academic journals vs working papers

are all economic facts greatly exaggerated theory competition and selectivity there is growing concern and mounting evidence of selectivity in empirical economics most empirical economic literatures have a truncated distribution of results the aim of this paper is to explore the link between publication selectivity and theory contests this link is confirmed through the analysis of 87 distinct empirical economics literatures involving more than three and a half thousand separate empirical studies using objective measures of both selectivity and contests our meta meta analysis shows that publication selection is widespread but not universal it distorts scientific inference with potentially adverse effects on policy making but competition and debate between rival theories reduces this selectivity and thereby improves economic inference

natural resources and economic growth a meta analysis summary an important question in development studies is how natural resources richness affects long term economic growth no consensus answer however has yet emerged with approximately 40 of empirical papers finding a negative effect 40 finding no effect and 20 finding a positive effect does the literature taken together imply the existence of the so called natural resource curse in a quantitative survey of 605 estimates reported in 43 studies we find that overall support for the resource curse hypothesis is weak when potential publication bias and method heterogeneity are taken into account our results also suggest that four aspects of study design are especially effective in explaining the differences in results across studies 1 controlling for institutional quality 2 controlling for the level of investment activity 3 distinguishing between different types of natural resources and 4 differentiating between resource dependence and abundance

bank competition and financial stability much ado about nothing the theoretical literature gives conflicting predictions on how bank competition should affect financial stability and dozens of researchers have attempted to evaluate the relationship empirically we collect 598 estimates of the competition stability nexus reported in 31 studies and analyze the literature using meta analysis methods we control for 35 aspects of study design and employ bayesian model averaging to tackle the resulting model uncertainty our findings suggest that the definition of financial stability and bank competition used by researchers influences their results in a systematic way the choice of data estimation methodology and control variables also affects the reported coefficient we find evidence for moderate publication bias taken together the estimates reported in the literature suggest little interplay between competition and stability even when corrected for publication bias and potential misspecifications this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

food and agricultural industries opportunities for improving measurement and reporting we measure one component of off farm food and agricultural industries using establishment level microdata in the federal statistical system we focus on services for crop production and compare measures of firm and employment dynamics in this sector during the 1992 2012 time period with county level publicly available data for the same measures based on differences across data sources we establish new facts regarding the evolution of food and agricultural industries and demonstrate the value of working with confidential microdata in addition to the data and results we present we highlight possibilities for collaboration across universities and federal agencies to improve reporting in other segments of food and agricultural industries

fixed equilibrium rationalizability in signaling games abstract this paper studies equilibrium refinements in signaling games through an examination of rationalizability in derived games obtained by replacing the equilibrium path with a sure outcome that yields the equilibrium payoff to all players the informed player chooses between the sure payoff and sending an out of equilibrium signal from the original game whether or not the strategy of choosing the sure payoff is rationalizable is related to the iterated intuitive condition divinity when the original game is viewed as having imperfect incomplete information our results also demonstrate the significance of testing out of equilibrium signals as a set rather than individually

how to solve the price puzzle a meta analysis the short run increase in prices following an unexpected tightening of monetary policy constitutes a frequently reported puzzle yet the puzzle is surprisingly easy to explain away when all published models are quantitatively reviewed we collect about 1 000 point estimates of impulse responses from 70 articles using vector autoregressive models and present a simple method of research synthesis for graphical results our ndings indicate publication selection in favor of the intuitive response of prices to a tightening the estimates depend systematically on study design when misspecications are

measuring intertemporal substitution the importance of method choices and selective reporting i examine 2 735 estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption eis reported in 169 published studies the literature shows strong selective reporting researchers discard negative and insignicant estimates too often which pulls the mean estimate up by about 0 5 the reporting bias dwarfs the effects of methods with the exception of the choice between micro and macro data when i correct the mean for the bias for macro estimates i get zero even though the reported t statistics are on average two the corrected mean of micro estimates of the eis for asset holders is around 0 3 0 4 calibrations greater than 0 8 are inconsistent with the bulk of the empirical evidence jel e21 c83

survey article publication bias in the literature on foreign direct investment spillovers abstract in this article we conduct a large quantitative survey of the literature on horizontal and vertical spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi we create a unique database of spillover estimates for each country examined in the literature next we estimate the average effect corrected for publication selection bias the preferential selection of positive and significant estimates for publication our results suggest that an average reported estimate of backward spillovers is statistically significant publication selection is evident only among studies published in peer reviewed journals and only among the estimates that authors consider most important authors with small data sets engage in more publication selection the intensity of selection in the literature decreases over time which supports the economics research cycle hypothesis

determinants of horizontal spillovers from fdi evidence from a large meta analysis summary the voluminous empirical research on horizontal productivity spillovers from foreign investors to domestic firms has yielded mixed results in this paper we collect 1 205 estimates of spillovers and examine which factors influence spillover magnitude our results suggest that horizontal spillovers are on average zero but that their sign and magnitude depend systematically on the characteristics of the domestic economy and foreign investors foreign investors who form joint ventures with domestic firms and who come from countries with a modest technology edge create the largest benefits for the domestic economy

are the direct and indirect growth effects of remittances significant development economists believe that migrant workers remittances are an important source of funds for long run growth therefore recent studies have investigated the growth effects of remittances and reached different conclusions in many such studies the growth of output is simply regressed on both remittances and the channels through which remittances affect growth thus there is no distinction between the indirect and direct growth effects of remittances and such specifications may give unreliable estimates because of the correlation between the channels and remittances in this paper we make a distinction between the indirect and direct effects of remittances our model is estimated with panel data of 40 high remittance recipient countries and a system gmm panel data estimation method

remittances and economic growth a meta analysis abstract expatriate workers remittances represent an important source of financing for low and middle income countries no consensus however has yet emerged regarding the effect of remittances on economic growth in a quantitative survey of 538 estimates reported in 95 studies we find that approximately 40 of the studies report a positive effect 40 report no effect and 20 report a negative effect our results indicate publication bias in favor of positive effects correcting for the bias using recently developed techniques we find that the mean effect of remittances on growth is still positive but economically small nevertheless our results uncover noticeable regional differences remittances are growth enhancing in asia but not in africa studies that do not control for alternative sources of external finance such as foreign aid and foreign direct investment mismeasure the effect of remittances finally time series studies and studies ignoring endogeneity issues report systematically larger effects of remittances on growth

remittances and economic growth larger impacts in smaller countries this paper examines the impact of remittances on economic growth in small island developing states sids results from variants of an empirical model suggest that while on average there is at best no association between remittances and growth in developing countries there is a positive association between these variables in sids this finding holds for sids in sub saharan africa and the pacific but not for those in latin america and the caribbean relationships between remittances economic volatility and household labour supply are offered as reasons for these findings

measuring the income elasticity of water demand the importance of publication and endogeneity biases we present the first study that examines the effects of publication selection in the literature estimating the income elasticity of water demand paradoxically more affected by publication selection are the otherwise preferable estimates that control for endogeneity attempting to correct simultaneously for publication and endogeneity biases we find that the mean underlying elasticity is approximately 0 15 or less the result is robust to controlling for more than 30 characteristics of the estimates and accounting for model uncertainty the differences in the reported estimates are systematically driven by differences in the tariff structure regional coverage data granularity and control for temperature

income elasticity of gasoline demand a meta analysis abstract in this paper we quantitatively synthesize empirical estimates of the income elasticity of gasoline demand reported in previous studies the studies cover many countries and report a mean elasticity of 0 28 for the short run and 0 66 for the long run we show however that these mean estimates are biased upwards because of publication bias the tendency to suppress negative and insignificant estimates of the elasticity we employ mixed effects multilevel meta regression to filter out publication bias from the literature our results suggest that the income elasticity of gasoline demand is on average much smaller than reported in previous surveys the mean corrected for publication bias is 0 1 for the short run and 0 23 for the long run

habit formation in consumption a meta analysis abstract we examine 597 estimates of habit formation reported in 81 published studies the mean reported strength of habit formation equals 0 4 but the estimates vary widely both within and across studies we use bayesian and frequentist model averaging to assign a pattern to this variance while taking into account model uncertainty studies employing macro data report consistently larger estimates than micro studies 0 6 vs 0 1 on average the difference remains 0 5 when we control for 30 factors that reflect the context in which researchers obtain their estimates such as data frequency geographical coverage variable definition estimation approach and publication characteristics we also find that evidence for habits strengthens when researchers use lower data frequencies employ log linear approximation of the euler equation and utilize open economy dsge models moreover estimates of habits differ systematically across countries

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46