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November/December 1994, 
Vol. 76, No. 6
Posted 1994-11-01

Replication and Scientific Standards in Applied Economics A Decade After the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking Project

by Richard G. Anderson and William G. Dewald

Since early 1993, the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has made data and programs for articles published in its Review available to the public. The files, developed during a pre-publication replication that assures the accuracy of an article’s empirical results, allow the interested reader to delve into the details of the author’s research. The Review is one of only a few journals in economics that provides access to the data used by its authors, and the only one to include the underlying programming. A decade ago, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking project was the first attempt by an economics journal to furnish readers with the data and programs used by its authors. The project affirmed that readers could not obtain data and programs directly from authors. Further, the project suggested a positive correlation between the journal’s furnishing data to readers and the care with which authors completed their research. Finally, the project demonstrated that professional journals are a low-cost way to distribute data to readers. The more recent experience at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reaffirms these conclusions.