Replication Research Symposium

Unsuccessful replications often lead to fierce debates between replicators and original authors. This paper investigates whether arguably impartial experts reach consensus on a famous yet unsettled replication debate about the seminal paper by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2001) and the replication by Albouy (2012). We successfully recruited experts from the pool of scholars citing one of the involved or similar articles. In a structured online questionnaire, we elicited the extent to which these experts align with either the original authors or opposing perspectives. Furthermore, the survey assessed whether the expert’s priors change after reading descriptive summaries of the original paper and the replication. We find that there is no consensus on whether the original results hold or not. Experts slightly lean towards the replicator's side, especially those with more professional experience, yet large parts also support the original authors. We conclude by discussing the epistemic implications of unresolved replication debates in economics. Our paper might inspire more work on using expert knowledge to interpret scientific controversies.