Anastasi Lecture 2021

(Predicting) Replication Outcomes

Anna Dreber, PhD.
Johan Björkman Professor of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics

Tuesday, October 26, 2021 | 4 p.m.

Which results can we “trust”? What share of results replicate in different literatures in the experimental social sciences? I will discuss several recent large replication projects in mainly psychology and economics, where my coauthors and I have redone experiments published in high impact journals with new and larger samples to see whether the main result replicates. I will also discuss our studies on “wisdom-of-crowds” mechanisms like prediction markets and forecasting surveys where researchers attempt to predict these replication outcomes as well as new outcomes. While the replications are mainly based on experiments, there are reasons to believe that the problems are worse in non-experimental work. I will also discuss ways to increase the reliability of scientific results.

Dr. Anna Dreber is the Johan Björkman Professor of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. Her research is mainly in meta-science and behavioral economics and focuses on replications and predicting replication outcomes in economics and psychology, but also explores topics such as hormones and economic decision making. Anna is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.