How is DA able to publish TWO crappy replications of Fisman (2001) that add almost nothing, even though the literature on political connections and firm value has moved significantly since then (with papers looking at connected directors and close election, school ties between CEOs and politicians, both corrupt and non-corrupt countries and so on)?
https://economics.mit.edu/files/13473
The Power of the Street: Evidence from Egypt's Arab Spring
Daron Acemoglu
Tarek A. Hassan
Ahmed Tahoun
in RFS
and
https://economics.mit.edu/files/11926
The Value of Connections in Turbulent Times: Evidence from the United States
Daron Acemoglu
Simon Johnson
Amir Kermani
James Kwak
Todd Mitton
Journal of Financial Economics, 121(2), pp, 368-391.
August 2016
Both are the exact same as the Fisman paper, just in different settings. The first paper looks at connected Egyptian firms around Mubarak protests and the second at "Geithner-connected" (with a really bad definition of connected to Geithner) firms around ONE event, the announcement of Geithner as treasury secretary.
How are our journals so bad that they basically accept anything with DA's name on it, like it's somehow an honor that he's choosing to publish in a finance journal?