ABSTRACT

Knowledge-making is a social activity. In this essay, I discuss how the economics discipline may be becoming a bit more cognizant of this fact, even though it goes against a long habit of imagining objectivity to be something attainable by lone (traditionally male) researchers. One promising recent development is the increasing attention being paid to community checks on empirical work in the form of meta-analysis, pre-registered studies, and replication. Another is the recent effort towards professional diversity and inclusion undertaken by leaders of the American Economic Association. To illustrate the importance of these two initiatives, I give an example of how community checks and inclusion of an historically marginalized perspective have exposed biases in previous – supposedly ‘rigorous’ – empirical behavioral economics research. Yet the acknowledgement that knowledge-making is social needs to expand further, into influencing not only how work, but what we work on, and what we work for.

抽象的

知识创造是一种社会活动。在本文中，我讨论了经济学学科如何逐渐认识到这一事实，尽管这与长期以来想象的客观性是孤独的（传统上是男性）研究人员可以实现的习惯无关。最近的一项有希望的发展是，以元分析，预注册研究和复制的形式，越来越多地重视对实证工作进行社区检查。另一个是美国经济协会（American Economic Association）领导人最近为促进专业多样性和包容性所做的努力。为了说明这两项举措的重要性，我举一个例子，说明社区检查和历史边缘化观点的纳入如何暴露了先前（据称是“严格的”）经验行为经济学研究中的偏见。