Title page 1

Contents 1

Abstract 3

1. Introduction 4

2. Observational Data (Unregistered Exploratory) 8

2.1. Dataset Construction 8

2.2. Trends in Pre-Registration 8

3. ESA Survey: Design and Sample 12

4. ESA Survey: Experience, Attitudes, and Beliefs 13

4.1. Current Practices 14

4.2. Application, Implementation, and Repor 20

4.3. Interpretation and Peer Review 24

5. Other Results and Discussion 27

5.1. The Trade-offs Behind Pre-registration Decisions 27

5.2. Optimal Design of Pre-registration Platforms 29

5.3. Other Open Science Institutions 31

5.4. Role of Professional Associations 32

5.5. What's Next? 34

Acknowledgements 37

References 37

Online Appendix 43

A. Additional Materials 44

A.1. Pre-Registrations in Articles Published in Economics Journals 44

A.2. Journal Policies 47

A.3. Survey Invitation 50

A.4. Demographic Information of the Conference Participants and ESA Members 51

A.5. List of Pre-Registered Hypotheses 52

B. Additional Results 53

C. Literature Review 60

D. Populated Pre-Analysis Plan 78

D.1. Survey data collection 78

D.2. Inclusion/exclusion criteria 79

D.3. Variables used in the analyses and tests 80

D.4. Analysis of selection 88

D.5. Descriptive results 91

D.6. Analyses and tests 92

D.7. Statistical power: Minimum detectable effect sizes 105

E. Survey Questions 106

References 122

Tables 11

Table 1. Journal policies around pre-registration (as of March 2025) 11

Table 2. Demographic characteristics of the survey respondents, ESAWorld Meeting participants, and ESA members 14

Table 3. Design of current platforms 30

Table 4. Open questions around the use of pre-registration 36

Figures 5

Figure 1. Registrations in the AEA RCT Registry, May 2013 to June 2024 5

Figure 2. Number of papers with pre-registration/pre-analysis plans published in each year 9

Figure 3. Number of papers with pre-registration/pre-analysis plans (solid line, left y-axis) and the total number of published papers (dashed line, right y-axis) 10

Figure 4. Attitude toward pre-registration. (a) Overall attitude. (b) Heterogeneity by year of Ph.D. completion 15

Figure 5. Beliefs about other respondents' attitude toward pre-registration. (a) All (N = 505). (b) Beliefs by respondents' own views (not favorable, N = 162; favorable,... 16

Figure 6. Research experience and adoption of pre-registration. (a) Red squares (■) represent the number of respondents who completed their Ph.D. by year... 17

Figure 7. Adoption of pre-registration by favorability rating. (a) Proportion of participants who have ever pre-registered (N = 515). (b) Frequency of pre-registration (N = 446) 18

Figure 8. (a) Type of pre-registered studies (N = 447). (b) Experience with field/RCT studies and preregistration. (c) Year of Ph.D. completion and pre-registration 18

Figure 9. Reasons for pre-registration (among 447 participants who pre-registered at least one of their research projects). (a) All (N = 446). (b) Selection of reasons... 19

Figure 10. Reasons for not pre-registering some or all of the research projects. (a) All (N = 366). (b) Selection of reasons by frequency of pre-registration... 20

Figure 11. Types of studies participants think should be pre-registered (N = 501) 21

Figure 12. (a) What elements a pre-registration should contain (N = 504). (b) The number of elements participants think should be contained in a pre-registration 22

Figure 13. How much should one follow a pre-registration (N = 513) 23

Figure 14. Which information the authors should disclose in the paper (N = 511) 24

Figure 15. Perceived credibility of a statistically significant (p 〈 0.05) finding. (a) Empirical CDFs of credibility ratings for hypotheses that are pre-registered... 25

Figure 16. Expected impact of pre-registration and credibility premium 26

Figure 17. Peer review. (a) Frequency of checking the pre-registration documents as a reviewer (N = 294). (b) Effect of checking the pre-registration documents... 27

Figure 18. Who should check the pre-registration documents that accompany a submission (N = 510) 27

Figure 19. Expected impact of pre-registration 28

Figure 20. Preferred disclosure policy and formats of pre-registration 30

Figure 21. Opinion on open science practices 32

Figure 22. Heterogeneity of support for other open science practices 33

Figure 23. Heterogeneity of attitudes toward and support for pre-registration and other open science practices 33

Figure 24. Role of the ESA in open science movement 34

Figure 25. What other initiatives the participants think the ESA should consider to promote research transparency and open science. (a) All (N = 511).... 35

Appendix Tables 45

Table A.1. List of journals 45

Table A.2. Keywords used for the full-text search 46

Table A.3. Correspondence between pre-analysis plans and presented results 52

Table B.1. Support of other open science institutions 54

Table B.2. Exploratory analysis 55

Table C.1. Literature on pre-analysis plans 77

Table D.1. Demographic characteristics of the survey respondents, ESAWorld Meeting participants,and ESA members 90

Table D.2. Primary hypothesis 1. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Year o fPh.D.": t (462) = 6.209, p 〈 0.001 92

Table D.3. Primary hypothesis 2. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Year of Ph.D.": t (465) = 9.551, p 〈 0.001 93

Table D.4. Primary hypothesis 3. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Year of Ph.D.": t (464) = 6.899, p 〈 0.001 93

Table D.5. Secondary hypothesis 1. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Year of Ph.D.": t (437) = 0.323, p = 0.747 94

Table D.6. Secondary hypothesis 2. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Year of Ph.D.": t (457) = 0.563, p = 0.574 94

Table D.7. Secondary hypothesis 3. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Year of Ph.D.": t (439) = 4.102, p 〈 0.001 95

Table D.8. Secondary hypothesis 4. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Year of Ph.D.": t (410) = 3.027, p = 0.003 95

Table D.9. Secondary hypothesis 7. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Elements of pre-registration": t (517) = 13.717, p 〈 0.001 97

Table D.10. Secondary hypothesis 8. t-test for the coefficient of the independent variable "Elements of pre-registration": t (504) = 10.692, p 〈 0.001 97

Table D.11. Exploratory analysis 1. Wald test of the joint significance of the 6 dummy variables: F (6, 505) = 7.766, p 〈 0.001 98

Table D.12. Exploratory analysis 2. Wald test of the joint significance of the 6 dummy variables: F (6, 502) = 17.353, p 〈 0.001 99

Table D.13. Exploratory analysis 3. Wald test of the joint significance of the 6 dummy variables: F (6, 501) = 16.317, p 〈 0.001 100

Table D.14. Exploratory analysis 4. Wald test of the joint significance of the 6 dummy variables: F (6, 497) = 0.951, p = 0.458 101

Table D.15. Exploratory analysis 5. Wald test of the joint significance of the 6 dummy variables: F (6, 498) = 0.858, p = 0.526 102

Table D.16. Exploratory analysis 6. Wald test of the joint significance of the 6 dummy variables: F (6, 496) = 3.393, p = 0.003 103

Table D.17. Exploratory analysis 7. Wald test of the joint significance of the 6 dummy variables: F (6, 496) = 3.003, p = 0.007 104

Appendix Figures 50

Figure A.1. Call for Survey. Invitation to the survey sent to the ESA members 50

Figure B.1. Beliefs about prevalence of and familiarity with pre-registration. (a) Beliefs about the percentage of papers published in EXEC and top-5 journals... 56

Figure B.2. Primary empirical method (N = 519) 56

Figure B.3. Adoption by subfield of research 57

Figure B.4. Associations between elements that researchers think should be contained in a preregistration 57

Figure B.5. Expected impact of pre-registration: Pairwise association measured by Kendall's тb 58

Figure B.6. Reasons for using a pre-registration platform 58

Figure B.7. Association between opinions on Open Science practices 59