We show that the F-test can be both liberal and conservative in the context of a particular type of nonspherical behaviour induced by spatial autocorrelation, and that the conservative variant is more likely to occur for extreme values of the spatial autocorrelation parameter. In particular, it...

This article takes issue with a recent book by Ziliak and McCloskey (2008) of the same title. Ziliak and McCloskey argue that statistical significance testing is a barrier rather than a booster for empirical research in economics and should therefore be abandoned altogether. The present article...