Money and Markets: Essays in Honor of Leland B. Yeager

78 Steven B. Caudill4. Education is the best hope. Education will improve the quality of empirical researchin many ways. The best and probably only hope for improvement lies with usas educators, referees, and journal editors. If we educate and enforce standards,the profession will follow along. On this point I echo McCloskey (1992) about thesolution to the problem of poor writing in economics. We all bear some of theresponsibility for the incidence of bad regressions, and as an econometrician, I bearmore than most. We spend so much time in econometrics class studying varioustechniques that we neglect the transition from theoretical model, or theory asHolcombe would call it, to empirical model. In this area we are far behind ourcousins in agricultural economics departments.As educators. We do not spend enough time in econometrics courses teachingstudents about the transition from structural model to empirical model. To use theanalogy of a cook, “We take them in the kitchen and show them how to use all theappliances but we do not show them how to prepare any meals.” We should do abetter job of training in our graduate programs. As econometricians we do imposestandards on students writing empirical papers for our econometrics classes, but,again, we tend to focus on the methods used and tests performed. Graduatestudents write empirical papers in most graduate courses, so a more global solutionis warranted. I suggest that graduate programs adopt a system similar to the oneused at my alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University, to address, ironically, theproblem of bad writing. At any time during a student’s college career, any termpaper written for any course deemed to be poorly written obligated the student toretake the freshmen English Composition course. In economics, I propose that anyempirical paper written for any course be submitted to the econometricians forreview. An unacceptable mark in econometrics would obligate the student toretake the econometrics sequence. I do not think this would result in many graduatestudents actually retaking the econometrics courses because the threat, alone,would have the desired effect of improving the quality of the empirical research.As referees and editors. As reviewers, we are too soft. When reviewing a paper, I tendto focus more on the method than the data. I have always felt that researchersshould not be held accountable for their data. Data are what they are. We all facedata constraints. My view was, “Do the best with what you have.” After all, baddata are not the fault of the researcher. For this reason I typically try to determinewhether a researcher has done as well as possible with the data they have. If theyhave done so, I recommend accept, if not, I recommend changes.I now realize that my “don’t blame the author for the data” approach to refereeingis wrong. If the data is no good, then the researcher can be held responsible for notchoosing a different topic. If the data is bad, don’t write the paper. Researchersin the PC area do not always follow this approach because we, as educators andreferees, have not always forced them to do so.The problem is that papers containing bad results still get published. If we, as aprofession, want to improve the quality of empirical research, we must not publish