Hoxby said in her response that she was unable to release the data due to the “restricted-access” nature of the information she was working with.

AER editor Moffitt said that “the data availability issue for that paper has arisen only because Professor Rothstein has attempted to replicate Professor Hoxby’s work.” He said that AER has granted exemptions to its policy in the past if confidentiality restrictions trump an author’s ability to release data. In those cases, Moffit said, AER asks the author to “assist other researchers in obtaining the data directly from the data provider.”

In 2004, Hoxby made a CD version of her data available to researchers through the National Center for Education Statistics. The CD contained both the extracted data and raw data from the 2000 paper, and Hoxby said Rothstein was the first to receive a copy.

Hoxby said that restrictions on the availability of her data precluded her from making it available sooner.

“Sometimes people would ask me for the data, I would say I couldn’t give them the data because of the restricted access,” she said. “I don’t have the choice about that.”

In September, Rothstein sent Hoxby an e-mail, claiming that the data on the CD seemed different from the data used for her original paper.

When asked about the e-mail, Hoxby only said that she found Rothstein’s letter “unprofessional.”

“I don’t even know what [Rothstein was] talking about,” Hoxby said. “He was complaining that he had a different CD. That’s when I said to him it is fine to ask me about these things, but you have to copy the AER editor.”

“I’ve really gone above and beyond the call of duty with this,” she added.

After that e-mail, Rothstein said he stopped corresponding with Hoxby.

An economics professor at a major university, who spoke to The Crimson on the condition of anonymity, said that he had similar difficulty obtaining data when he tried to replicate the results of Hoxby’s 2000 paper three years ago.

“She explicitly said she gave [the data] to no one—not even big shots in the economics field—and that I should I not take it personally, but she was not going to release that data,” said the professor.

PROFESSIONAL DIALOGUE?

Professors say it is not uncommon for authors to publish opposing papers in economics journals. But many in the field say that the tone of the Hoxby-Rothstein dialogue—and Rothstein’s decision to challenge a star of the economics field in his second year as a professor—sets it apart from past exchanges.

“[The debate] does seem to be particularly personal and particularly combative in a way some people might describe as being a little unprofessional,” said Brigitte C. Madrian, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who has known Hoxby for 15 years.