From the inbox:
New for Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy and online now on Taylor & Francis Online:
Accounting for heterogeneity in behavioural responses to health-risk information treatments
O. Ashton Morgan, John C. Whitehead & William L. Huth
DOI: 10.1080/21606544.2015.1115747
Here are my initial thoughts on JEEP.
The website says:
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 8 June 2015
Accepted 30 October 2015
But that isn't really the true history of this paper. It began as the empirical model for a paper published in EARE (2013). The referees didn't like the latent class model so we injected heterogeneity manually with split-samples. We still liked the latent class model so we wrote another paper as if we were advancing the science of our EARE paper by going from the blunt instrument of split sample heterogeneity to the black box of finite mixture heterogneneity. Here is the original working paper that we split into the JEEP (13-05) and EAERE (13-06) papers. We (i.e., Ash) reestimated the latent class model without covariates that described the consumer classes (the covariates that the EARE referee found so offensive) and sent the paper (13-05) to Resource and Energy Economics and got a revise and resubmit. But, we couldn't finish the deal (sigh*) and the revision was rejected. At our wits end, we submitted to JEEP (oddly called TEEP by Taylor and Francis). In the R&R a JEEP referee suggested that we include covariates to help describe the consumer classes (wish we had thought of that!). We looked back at the 13-05 working paper and realized that our original model was the one the JEEP referee might be pleased with. So, instead of reestimating the model we only had to cut and past from the original paper.
Looking back, we maybe should have held firm on the latent class model at EARE but in the heat of the moment (i.e., trying to get a paper published) you tend to take the suggestions of the referees. Now it appears as if we tried to maximize publications from a single data set but that was never our objective.
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*Failing to close the deal on R&Rs has happened three times now from this oyster project. The second time was at AJAE and the paper is now forthcoming at Land Econ. The third was at JEEM and that paper has now been submitted to its fourth journal. Can anyone else claim such a sorry record? Part of the problem is that we are following the rule to never turn down an R&R, however weak and shaky. A better rule for me might be to go ahead and turn that shaky R&R. I'll add this to my publication rule of not submitting a sorry paper to a good journal (i.e., if even the author doesn't think the paper belongs in a journal the author shouldn't submit the paper there -- I miss more authors would follow this rule).
