Does Empirical Finance Replicate?

I attempt to replicate the main result of every empirical paper published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies from 2000 to 2020, first in the original sample and then in later years. An autonomous LLM pipeline rebuilds each result from the paper and available databases, with independent audits of every replication. I obtain 1,328 in-sample replications, 1,005 with enough post-sample data for an out-of-sample test. In sample, 75% reproduce the published sign and significance, and the median coefficient recovers 0.93 of the published value. Out of sample, the rate falls to 42%, and the median coefficient ratio to 0.45. The coefficient ratio drops sharply when the original sample ends and is flat on either side, consistent with data snooping rather than investor learning or gradual market change. Although original t-statistics strongly predict persistence, standard models of publication selection explain only about one-fifth of the overall decay. Published finance is largely reproducible in its original samples but much less durable in later data.