Applied production analysis unveiled in open peer review: introductory remarks

Abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Productivity Analysis is the outcome of a unique modeling session organized at the 9th European Workshop on Efficiency and Productivity Measurement (EWEPA9) between June 29 and July 2, 2005 in Brussels (see http://www.ewepa.org). The overall goals of this special issue are twofold. First, this issue seeks to illuminate the ‘‘context of discovery’’ in applied production analysis in the sense of identifying the forces motivating the actual choices of applied economists as they undertake their empirical research. Since economic knowledge is uncertain and the process of knowledge creation is highly speculative, we want to showcase how a set of scholars undertake the critical examination of a common problem, select what they perceive to be the proper models to analyze the data, and then make some final judgments and formulate some policy conclusions in an imperfect world. Second, this venture provides a means to transfer academic expertise from seasoned scholars to emerging scholars (graduates, Ph.D. students, young researchers, etc.) by observing scholars engage in problem solving. Observing social scientists in action is hardly ever informative, since social sciences researchers normally do not share a common life in a laboratory (except when collecting experimental data—still a rather exceptional data collection method in economics). It is indeed less obvious how young researchers receive informal training in their respective social science disciplines in addition to their formal training (e.g., their participation in Ph.D. programs). Being able to witness (not by direct observation, but indirectly reviewing the written record) how established scholars go about tackling a problem can prove valuable for Ph.D. students and young researchers. Of course, this does not amount to denying that some close substitutes for our project do exist. For instance, there are some excellent econometrics textbooks with many hands-on exercises (e.g., Berndt 1991; Greene 2003). But, these books focus on duplicating streamlined (often published) results, not on how these results actually emerged in the first place. As yet another possibility, one could simply ask successful researchers about their methodologies and underlying motivations when they introduced major new theories. This may partly explain the existence of a growing number of books with collections of interviews with eminent economists. Some of these interview books are rather general in nature (e.g., Szenberg 1992 or Samuelson and Barnett 2006), other books focus on particular topics (e.g., Klamer (1984) focuses on the then hot debate on the new classical macroeconomics, Swedberg (1992) sheds light on the boundary between economics and sociology) or contribute to the intellectual history of the field (e.g., Colander and Landreth (1996) explore the introduction of Keynesian ideas in US academic life). However, these books tend to focus on eminent scientists only. While everybody can no doubt benefit from understanding how S. E. Stefanou (&) Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, Armsby Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA e-mail: spiros@psu.edu