Dear all,
I am serious to learn about the profession and how to get published, so please could you give me some honest answers?/ I am an LRM grad student and want to do well.
I always try to demotivate myself if I don't find a clean identification strategy or if my methodology is not good enough.
I've come across this paper Income and Democracy by Acemoglou et al (2008) at https://economics.mit.edu/files/9037
I can't comprehend why this was published in the AER. Their strategy was very simple. First, control for fixed effect and previous results disappeared (which is quite trivial thing to do and maybe the previous studies didn't do this to get publish).
Second, use saving rates as instruments for Income and claim that there are other channels that the instruments could affect democracy (dependent variable), then show a bunch of estimates to claim that's not important. I don't feel convinced at all with that method.
The research question is not novel - at least to me. I am working on my JMP and every time I come across some "novel question" or at least revisit old "novel question with dubious methodology" I have to stop myself since I can't come up with a clean strategy.
So could someone please explain to me why the paper is so good.
I want to learn genuienly.
Thank you.
