Emphasizing the new challenges posed by the data science revolution, digital media, and changing norms, Research Ethics in Applied Economics: A Practical Guide examines the ethical issues faced by quantitative social scientists at each stage of the research process.

The first section of the book considers project development, including issues of project management, selection bias in asking research questions, and political incentives in the development and funding of research ideas. The second section addresses data collection and analysis, discussing concerns about participant rights, data falsification, data management, specification search, p-hacking, and replicability. The final section focuses on sharing results with academic audiences and beyond, with an emphasis on self-plagiarism, social media, and the importance of achieving policy impact. The discussion and related recommendations highlight emergent issues in research ethics.

Featuring perspectives from experienced researchers on how they address ethical issues, this book provides practical guidance to both students and experienced practitioners seeking to navigate ethical issues in their applied economics research.

Table of Contents

1. Research Ethics for the Applied Economist

2. Idea Development

3. Project Development

4. Data Collection

5. Data Management

6. Data Analysis

7. Academic Research Dissemination

8. Dissemination Beyond the Academy

9. On Being an Ethical Applied Economist

Reviews

"Josephson and Michler tackle the critical issue of integrating ethics and transparency into empirical research, detailing a set of practical tools and approaches. As data and processing capacity makes empirical analyses widely accessible, this book is a must-read for every social scientist doing quantitative research."

Kathy Baylis, Professor and Vice Chair of Graduate Programs, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara

"In a book that is as broad as it is deep, Josephson and Michler set the standard for what constitutes ethical research in applied economics."

Marc F. Bellemare, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota; Author of Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School - But Didn't

"Josephson and Michler have written the textbook applied economics needed on research ethics, transparency, and data collection methods. Engaging and highlighting the latest advances, this book is a must-read for economics graduate students as well as all scholars who want to do social science research the right way."

Edward Miguel, Oxfam Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley; Faculty Director of the Center for Effective Global Action; Co-author of Transparent and Reproducible Social Science Research