This paper examines the role of replication in empirical economic research. It presents the findings of a two-year study that collected programs and data from authors and attempted to replicate their published results. Our research provides new and important information about the extent and causes of failures to replicate published results in economics. Our findings suggest that inadvertent errors in published empirical articles are a commonplace rather thana rare occurrence.

This paper examines the distribution fu nctions of elasticity estimators in translog demand models. The authors consider the normaland ratio-of-normals distributions and present confidence intervals for the elasticity estimators. The results suggest that only elasticity estimato rs based on the means of the actual cost shares are likely to follow either the normal or ratio-of-normals distribution function. Examination of three published empirical studies demonstrates that inferences regarding the values of elasticities cannot be made from point estimates alone and suggests a trade- off between the level of aggregation and the width of confidence intervals for the elasticit y estimators.