Most of them are actually in Norway.
How long will the Norwegian Data scam go on?
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About every second paper in JPE/QJE is about Norwegian data. What do we learn from this? Is the purpose of economics as a field to make policy recommendations valid exclusively in Norway?
Silly you with your external validity concerns. If it works for a homogeneous country of 5M people with 2nd highest gdp per capita in the world and a sovereign wealth fund of over $1T and 1.3% of worldwide assets...it must work everywhere. It's just like how research on Sumo wrestler corruption applies to all corruption contexts...
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About every second paper in JPE/QJE is about Norwegian data. What do we learn from this? Is the purpose of economics as a field to make policy recommendations valid exclusively in Norway?
THe bigger question is why are so many studies of countries with only 3-10 million people so well powered?
The answere, these data are p-hacked and tortured, and the standard errors are not done right but you'll never know that unless you happen to work in one of those countries for $50k a year so you can actually get the secret data.
Imagine if you tried to publish a paper using awesome administrative data from North Dakota or Maine (basically finland). People would completely complain about the lack of external validity yet they get away with it. Despite the fact that Nordic countries celebrate leisure and basically say culturally they never want to work over 35 hours a week. How much can we actually learn from them???
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Here is a list of Norwegians with pubs in JPE over the last 4 years (tried putting in the full names, but mods shut down the link... smart norwegians):
MM, BT, AF, MB, KL, KS, MR, LE, CB, AA, AC, ES, ME.
And growing as we speak. Pretty "talented" people for a country with a population the size of North Dakota...
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Maybe it takes time for the field to start recognizing the importance of his papers. And if not, how did he become editor at MS?
Wow, seriously, look at Bertil's CV. it is a scandal.
Since his PhD in 1995, he published mainly philosophy and papers in things like Social Choice & Welfare. Until the early 2010s, he published a handful of papers in top fields or better. Then he becomes editor of MS, and has 5 papers in that journal (including a current R&R). Then he becomes editor of JPE, and has 4 papers R&R at that journal. This is insane - and look at the papers, it is not like there is any real qualitative difference from the early work. "Exercise Improves Academic Performance" - an RCT on exercise and academic achievement? In the JPE? Come on now. -
Always fun to listen to mainly American based folks complain about research based in/about other countries. Welcome to our world, imperialist pig dogs.
Exactly, take a dose of your own medicine.
Also happy for the Norwegians, thats what others have been doing for a long time, in particular murifarts.