Trends in the Publication of Experimental Economics Articles

We report data on the experimental articles published in the last two decades in seven prominent, general-interest economics journals, considering laboratory and other types of experiments separately. In addition, we also look at time trends in the characteristics of the published experimental articles. We find an overall increasing trend in the publication of experimental research. This is mainly driven by non-lab experiments, which have overtaken lab experiments in all considered outlets. The reversal of fortunes is most striking in the AER, where the share of lab experiments more than halved over the past twenty years and converged to the share of lab experiments in other Top 5 journals. We also observe some heterogeneities in publication, citations, rankings, and locations of authors’ affiliations across journals and types of experiments.