Money, methods, and morals: What are development economists up to?

• Published date: 01 November 2024
• Author: Anke Hoeffler,Reetika Khera
• Date: 01 November 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.13165

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Money, methods, and morals: What are

development economists up to?

Anke Hoeffler

1

| Reetika Khera

2

1

Department of Political Science and

Public Administration, University of

Konstanz, Constance, Germany

2

Department of Humanities and Social

Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology

Delhi, New Delhi, India

Correspondence

Anke Hoeffler, Department of Political

Science and Public Administration,

University of Konstanz, Constance,

Germany.

Email: anke.hoeffler@uni-konstanz.de

Funding information

Alexander von Humbolt Foundation

Abstract

In the highly competitive field of publishing in eco-

nomics journals, methods often become fads sometimes

to the detriment of framing meaningful research

agendas and of research ethics. In recent times, empiri-

cal work based on primary data collection has gained

traction. Randomized controlled trials entail not just

primary data collection but also interventions involving

human subjects. Field research involving data collec-

tion is also expensive, raising a number of concerns. In

this special symposium we explore questions of

research agendas and research ethics, and argue fo rthe

acceptance of broader methodological approaches,

greater inclusion in the publication process and for a

reflection at the disciplinary level of practices related to

field research.

KEYWORDS

development economics, diversity in research, mixed methods,

randomized controlled trials, research ethics

1|INTRODUCTION

The trigger for this special symposium was a submission to the journal of what is now the third

last article in this collection. Upon reviewing it, one of the journal editors felt that the concerns

raised regarding the current state of development economics were sufficiently widespread to

merit a collection of papers around the three themes in the title of this special symposium. Of

Received: 9 September 2024 Accepted: 11 September 2024

DOI: 10.1111/rode.13165

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,

distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2024 The Author(s). Review of Development Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Rev Dev Econ. 2024;28:1891–1899. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rode 1891