A highly cited economics paper that suggested people raised during recessions were more likely to vote for left-leaning political parties has been retracted, apparently due to a coding error that rendered the results invalid.
The retraction marks a rarity among economics papers, which research has shown are infrequently retracted compared to papers on other subjects. The article appears to be the first in The Review of Economic Studies to have been retracted for a reason other than publisher error.
The study’s authors, Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilimbergo, are economists at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles and the International Monetary Fund, respectively. Giuliano is also the Chauncey J. Medberry Chair in Management at UCLA.
The paper, “Growing up in a Recession,” was published in November 2013. It has been cited 222 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. Working papers from the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have also cited the article.
The paper was retracted on January 11. According to the retraction notice:
The authors and editorial team are retracting this article because the original findings cannot be replicated, likely as a result of an inadvertent coding error. While the original codes and data sets are no longer available, new analysis with a markedly similar data set does not support the original results.
Neither the paper’s authors nor the editors of the journal responded to a request for comment from Retraction Watch.
The study has received a fair amount of media attention. An article in Salon, published soon after the final version of the study, was titled, “Has the recession spawned a generation of Democrats?” An earlier, working version of the article available in 2009 sparked an opinion piece in the New York Times from conservative columnist Ross Douthat. More recently, articles have cited the study in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. government’s response.
Retractions from economics journals have been rarer than for some other subjects, such as the biomedical sciences. A 2012 study examining retractions of economics papers for plagiarism found only six going back to 2009. But the Retraction Watch Database shows that around 700 economics papers were retracted between 2013 and December 2022.
Discussion of the retraction on Twitter was mixed. Economist Florian Ederer applauded the authors for retracting the paper.
Others were more critical of the retraction notice, particularly the assertion that the code used in the study no longer exists.
“I don’t really understand the reason,” wrote Tim Martens, an assistant professor of accounting at Bocconi University in Italy, in a reply to Ederer’s tweet. “Did their dogs eat the code?”
Hat tip: Ariel Karlinsky
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That’s not because economics papers are more reliable, it’s because economists don’t retract even when their conclusions are shown to be false. Remember Reinhart and Rogoff? https://retractionwatch.com/2013/04/18/influential-reinhart-rogoff-economics-paper-suffers-database-error/