Non-peer reviewed, inaccessible data, and punditry that can’t tell the difference between P&P and a regular AER article can’t be good for the reputation of the journal, the AEA, or the profession.
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Cheap Talk 
44 comments
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April 16, 2013 at 8:00 pm
Enrique
Fair points, but I doubt that getting rid of the papers & proceedings will improve the reputation of the economics profession at the margin
April 16, 2013 at 8:13 pm
twicker
P&P may be only one of a thousand cuts, but it’s a pretty deep gash …
April 16, 2013 at 8:28 pm
Lones Smith
Before killing it, why not divulge how we plebeians can get in on this insider racket? 🙂
“Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire” – Johnny Milton
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” – Billy Shakespeare
April 16, 2013 at 8:33 pm
jeff
Lones: it’s right here: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/edpolicy.php
Quoting:
Papers appearing in the May issue of the Review, the issue containing the Papers and Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, are handled separately. The President-Elect of the Association chooses the papers for publication with advice from a team of experts in the various fields.
April 16, 2013 at 8:33 pm
Tayfun Sonmez
I agree with you completely and second your move!
April 16, 2013 at 10:30 pm
Lance
For what it’s worth, I doubt the peer-review process would have discovered the coding errors. Editors generally rely upon the authors for that due diligence. Nor is there time to replicate each result other than forcing authors to make data and programs available.
There has to be some way for the AEA to allow authors who present at plenary sessions to have their presentations in print form for other academics, but to avoid the appearance it’s a ‘regular’ publication of the AER.
April 16, 2013 at 11:14 pm
Daniel
With the Internet, it’s remarkably easy to make presentations and papers widely available.
April 16, 2013 at 11:35 pm
Alex F
They could change the R to an A, and call it AEA P&P?
April 17, 2013 at 6:59 am
jeff
That is an elegant solution. Ok motion amended.
April 17, 2013 at 7:57 pm
Enrique
That such a minor tweak would cure this supposed evil makes me question the gravity of the evil
April 16, 2013 at 11:32 pm
Alex F
In the media’s defense, Reinhart and Rogoff don’t seem quite clear on the distinction either: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/16/reinhart_and_rogoff_respond_researchers_say_high_debt_is_associated_with.html
“Table 1 of the 2010 AER paper… our original 2010 AER table 1… our core Table 1 (AER paper)… our 2010 AER paper.”
April 17, 2013 at 2:17 am
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April 17, 2013 at 3:22 am
Anonymous
Here is a related post:
April 17, 2013 at 3:27 am
Reinhart & Rogoff : une courte remarque | Rationalité Limitée
[…] Il faut savoir que les P&P de l’AER suivent un processus de publication particulier puisqu’il n’y a pas de referees et pas d’obligation de rendre disponibles les donn…. En fait, depuis trois ans, personne n’avait véritablement eu la possibilité de […]
April 17, 2013 at 8:45 am
Anonymous
The American Finance Association did that in the 1990s and the association benefitted from that move.
April 17, 2013 at 9:37 am
dan s
hear hear (aea p&p is brilliant)
April 17, 2013 at 1:06 pm
Barry
Daniel: “With the Internet, it’s remarkably easy to make presentations and papers widely available.”
Which I believe it only took R&R three years to do – perhaps they had lost their password, or something.
April 17, 2013 at 1:10 pm
Anonymous
It’s a good idea to ask for more transparency, i.e., make it clear that AER is refereed while AER P&P is not. However, I don’t think that the (lack of) refereeing is the key issue here.
For example, the authors of a hugely popular paper in Econometrica trimmed the dataset (significantly altering the results) in a very convenient way (for them), but the findings were presented as if the entire dataset was used. Some errors will get through with or without refereeing.
Let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt and don’t assume intentional errors: Mistakes happen. However, when mistakes are found, it is up to us as a community to chose what we consider an appropriate response. For me, the real question is this: Is R&R’s response appropriate or not?
April 17, 2013 at 8:01 pm
Dismalist
It is perfectly clear that P&P is not refereed, as stated upthread. Please don’t stop publishing P&P: It’s the only part of the AER I understand, on average! Do you want me to rely on the uneven, sophomoric, JEP?
We must distinguish between status seekers and users of information.
April 18, 2013 at 12:51 am
Ekkehart Schlicht
There are two types of rejection errors. I guess that peer review will filter out some more original as well as some faulty contributions.
The Barro 1974 JPE paper has presumably been peer-reviewed, right? Yet it contains a rather elementary mistake that invalidates its thesis, and this has been propagated ever since, see http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/14847/
April 18, 2013 at 9:38 pm
o
What I like about the P&P is the signal value on a candidate’s CV. I learn a lot about the person when P&P masquerades as a “real” AER publication.
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