--- name: american-economic-review description: Use when targeting American Economic Review (AER) or deciding whether an economics manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics. --- # American Economic Review (american-economic-review) ## Journal positioning AER is the flagship general-interest journal of the American Economic Association and one of the economics "top-5" (with QJE, JPE, Econometrica, REStud). It wants papers of broad interest to economists across fields, with a first-order question, a credible answer, and a result that changes how the profession thinks — not an incremental field paper. The audience is the whole discipline, so the contribution must read as important to someone outside your subfield. A full lifecycle pack for AER ships separately as `AER-skills` (the `aer-*` skills). This profile is the quick fit / venue-selection layer; route into `aer-workflow` for step-by-step drafting and submission. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the AEA site or the editorial-manager submission system. ## When to trigger - The author names AER (or AER as a stretch target) as the venue. - A paper has a clean research design and a question of general interest, and the author is choosing between AER and a top field journal. - A strong field paper needs re-framing so the contribution reads as discipline-wide rather than niche. - The author needs AER's desk-reject risks and a credible top-5 / top-field alternative list. ## Scope & topic fit - First-order questions across all fields of economics — micro, macro, labor, public, IO, trade, development, finance-adjacent — judged on general interest. - Empirical papers with a transparent, defensible identification strategy. - Theory papers whose results are general and consequential, not a narrow extension. - Consider the sibling AEJs (`aej-applied-economics`, `aej-macroeconomics`, `aej-microeconomics`, `aej-economic-policy`) and short-format `aer-insights` when the contribution is excellent but narrower than AER's general-interest bar. ## Method & evidence bar - Identification is the desk filter: naive TWFE on staggered treatment, weak or unjustified instruments, and RDD without density/covariate-smoothness evidence get rejected fast. - Empirical work is expected to pre-empt the obvious threats (selection, measurement, confounders) with design, not hand-waving; modern DiD estimators, proper inference, and robustness are baseline. - Structural and theory papers need clearly stated assumptions, identification of structural parameters, and results that generalize. - Data and code transparency is mandatory; AEA enforces a data and code availability policy with verification. ## Structure & house style - The introduction must, in its first pages, state the question, the contribution, the approach, and the headline result — and say explicitly why a non-specialist should care. - Make the marginal contribution non-overlapping: separate the theory/identification advance from the empirical finding from the policy reading. - AER uses an unstructured abstract, JEL codes, and a tightly disciplined main text with online appendices for everything secondary. - Exhibits are expected to be self-contained and publication-clean; the headline result should be legible from one table or figure. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked. - Search the live site for "American Economic Review submission guidelines" and the AEA "Data and Code Availability Policy" and follow the current versions. - Re-check submission fee, formatting, abstract/JEL requirements, anonymization expectations, and figure/table standards on the editorial-manager system. - Re-check the current data/code deposit and verification workflow (openICPSR / AEA Data Editor) — this is enforced before acceptance. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] One sentence stating why an economist outside your field should care about this result. - [ ] The contribution is stated as identification / theory / measurement, not as statistical significance. - [ ] The introduction positions the paper against the current top-5 / top-field frontier on this question. - [ ] Identification threats are addressed by design; inference and DiD/IV/RDD choices are state-of-the-art. - [ ] Data and code are ready for the AEA availability + verification workflow. ## Common desk-reject triggers - A well-executed but narrow field paper with no general-interest hook. - Identification that the profession no longer accepts (TWFE on staggered adoption, weak IV, cosmetic RDD). - Contribution framed as "first to study X in context Y" without a methodological or conceptual advance. - Significance treated as the finding; mechanism and external validity left thin. ## Re-routing decision - Narrower-but-excellent applied → `aej-applied-economics`; macro → `aej-macroeconomics` or `review-of-economic-dynamics`; micro theory → `aej-microeconomics` or `journal-of-economic-theory`; policy → `aej-economic-policy` or `journal-of-public-economics`. - Short, sharp, single-result papers → `aer-insights`. - Field-leading specialist work → the relevant top field journal (`journal-of-labor-economics`, `journal-of-development-economics`, `journal-of-public-economics`, `journal-of-finance`, etc.). ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] American Economic Review [Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics> [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check] [Re-route suggestion] ```