Luigi Butera

Copenhagen Business School

will give a presentation on

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 and journals’ incentives are not sufficient to encourage replications. We analyze a novel, decentral- ized approach promoting replications through beneficial gains between scholars and editors. We highlight the trade-offs involved in seeking independent replications before submission to journals, and demonstrate the operation of this method via an investi- gation of the effects of Knightian uncertainty on cooperation in public goods games, a pervasive but largely unexplored feature in the literature.