Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Economic research involving individuals, households, consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, firms, public officials, or other participants through surveys, interviews, experiments, focus groups, behavioral studies, field experiments, or identifiable administrative data must comply with applicable institutional, national, and professional ethical requirements.

• The approving ethics committee or institutional review board must be identified where approval is required.
• The ethics approval/reference number should be reported where applicable.
• Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained where required.
• An approved waiver of consent must be disclosed and justified.
• Participant privacy, confidentiality, dignity, and autonomy must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified.
• Economic incentives used in experiments must not create inappropriate coercion or undue influence.
• Additional safeguards must be reported when economically vulnerable populations are involved.

Economic research may involve household surveys, firm-level datasets, banking or financial information, labor-market records, taxation data, administrative databases, government statistics, commercial databases, transaction records, or other restricted datasets.

• Authors must have lawful and authorized access to the data used.
• Personally identifiable information must be anonymized or de-identified where appropriate.
• Household, employee, firm, taxpayer, client, and institutional confidentiality must be respected.
• Contractual, licensing, governmental, or third-party restrictions on data use must be followed.
• Authors must not disclose protected or identifiable economic information without authorization.
• Proprietary datasets must be used according to applicable licensing conditions.
• Restrictions affecting replication or data sharing must be stated clearly in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors must report research methods, economic models, data sources, assumptions, estimation procedures, and analytical decisions with sufficient clarity to permit scientific evaluation and, where possible, replication.

• Research design and methodological approach must be clearly identified.
• Population, sample, economic units, firms, households, countries, regions, or data sources must be explained.
• Sampling and selection procedures must be transparent.
• Variables, indicators, proxies, indices, and measurement procedures must be defined clearly.
• Econometric specifications and theoretical assumptions must be explained.
• Statistical, econometric, mathematical, qualitative, experimental, or computational procedures must be described.
• Endogeneity, selection bias, missing data, multicollinearity, heteroskedasticity, robustness checks, model diagnostics, and other relevant analytical issues should be addressed where applicable.
• Transformations, exclusions, weighting procedures, outlier treatment, and model-selection decisions should be reported transparently.
• Systematic reviews should follow an appropriate reporting framework such as PRISMA where applicable.

Editors are responsible for maintaining a fair, confidential, independent, and evidence-based editorial process.

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, relevance, analytical credibility, and ethical compliance.
• Apply journal policies consistently and without inappropriate discrimination.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial records.
• Protect reviewer identities under the journal's double-blind model.
• Declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartiality may be compromised.
• Select reviewers with appropriate subject, econometric, methodological, and disciplinary expertise.
• Prevent coercive citation, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, and inappropriate editorial influence.
• Address complaints, appeals, and integrity concerns fairly.
• Take proportionate corrective action when the scholarly record is unreliable.
• Ensure that APC payment or waiver status does not influence editorial decisions.

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, independent, and timely assessments.
• Accept assignments only when appropriate expertise and sufficient time are available.
• Treat manuscripts, datasets, supplementary files, analytical code, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, data manipulation, duplicate publication, or other misconduct confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, hostile language, unsupported allegations, and discriminatory comments.
• Recommend citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.
• Never use unpublished information, models, data, methods, or results for personal or professional advantage.
• Do not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public generative AI systems.

• Submit original work that has not been formally published and is not under review elsewhere.
• Report methods, economic models, analyses, findings, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting datasets, analytical code, model output, documentation, and research records where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, informed consent, permissions, and data-use authorization.
• Disclose funding sources and the role of funders.
• Disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Ensure all listed authors qualify for authorship.
• Obtain approval from all authors for the submitted version and author order.
• Disclose relevant use of generative AI.
• Notify the journal promptly if a significant analytical, factual, or ethical problem is discovered.

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability. Authors should meet recognized authorship principles and take responsibility for the integrity of the work.

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting or critical intellectual review of the manuscript;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

• Author contributions should be described using appropriate CRediT roles.
• Non-author contributors should be acknowledged with permission.
• Authorship changes require written justification and agreement from all affected authors.
• Artificial intelligence tools cannot qualify as authors.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose relationships that may influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgment.

Authors must identify funding sources, grant numbers where applicable, and the role of the funder in study design, data collection, economic modeling, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included in research manuscripts.
• Data repositories, persistent identifiers, access conditions, licensing conditions, or restrictions should be reported.
• De-identified datasets, analytical code, statistical scripts, model specifications, questionnaires, or supplementary material should be shared where ethically, legally, and contractually possible.
• Restrictions arising from privacy, confidentiality, government regulation, contractual agreements, or proprietary data must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective exclusion, or misleading presentation of economic data is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying data, code, calculations, model output, or research documentation when necessary to evaluate research integrity.

All manuscripts may be screened using Turnitin. The journal normally requires an overall similarity index below 20%, subject to editorial assessment of the nature and location of the matching material.

Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, translation plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and undisclosed reuse of previously published text, models, tables, figures, or analyses are prohibited.

• AI must not replace human scholarly judgment or authorship responsibility.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, calculations, economic models, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, code, datasets, calculations, models, analyses, or policy interpretations must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished datasets, administrative records, or analytical code into public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, numerical errors, factual inaccuracies, bias, and misleading economic interpretations.

Eligible manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers.

• Reviewer selection is based on subject, economic field, methodological, and econometric expertise.
• Authors and reviewers remain anonymous to one another during review.
• Reviewer recommendations inform, but do not determine, the final editorial decision.
• Conflicting reviewer recommendations may result in additional review.
• Editors who are authors or have conflicts must not participate in handling the manuscript.
• Acceptance or rejection is based on scholarly merit, analytical credibility, and ethical compliance rather than financial, institutional, commercial, or policy considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, reproducibility, or integrity of scholarly publishing.

Credible concerns are evaluated fairly, confidentially, consistently, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been assessed.

1. Initial assessment: determine whether the concern is specific, credible, relevant, and within the journal's responsibility.
2. Clarification: request explanations, original datasets, analytical code, model specifications, calculations, ethics documentation, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek subject, methodological, econometric, statistical, ethical, or legal expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, data providers, ethics committees, or other responsible bodies where necessary.
5. Editorial action: take proportionate action according to the evidence and seriousness of the concern.

Formal notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain freely accessible, and be linked permanently to the scholarly record where applicable.

A manuscript is not considered formally withdrawn until the Editorial Office has reviewed the withdrawal request and provided written confirmation. Ethical concerns such as duplicate submission, authorship disputes, suspected plagiarism, fabricated economic data, manipulated analyses, unauthorized data use, or research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, analytical validity, ethical matters, economic data, policy-related conflicts, or research-integrity procedures.

An editorial appeal should identify a material factual error, procedural irregularity, substantial misunderstanding, inappropriate application of journal policy, or relevant evidence that was overlooked.

Where independent assessment is necessary, complaints or appeals will be considered by an editor or qualified person who was not materially involved in the original matter.

• Authors must submit original work and respect third-party intellectual-property rights.
• Permission must be obtained for copyrighted third-party material where required.
• Proprietary databases, commercial datasets, software, algorithms, economic indices, figures, maps, tables, or licensed statistical products must be used lawfully.
• Authors retain the full copyright of their work.
• The journal receives a non-exclusive right of first publication.

Manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, unpublished datasets, analytical code, economic records, allegations, investigations, and editorial correspondence are treated as confidential.

The journal maintains appropriate editorial records to document manuscript decisions, reviewer activity, revisions, ethical assessments, complaints, appeals, corrections, and integrity investigations in accordance with applicable legal and institutional requirements.