---
name: jie-contribution-framing
description: Use to frame the contribution of a Journal of International Economics (JIE) manuscript so it clears the journal's gate that work be original in its motivation or modelling structure — articulating what is new for international trade or international macro/finance, for an audience split between the two halves of the field. Frames the "what's new"; it does not produce the results.
---

# Contribution Framing (jie-contribution-framing)

## When to trigger

- The results exist but the "so what / what's new" is not crisp
- A referee might say "incremental" or "not original enough"
- You need to state the contribution in JIE's own terms before writing the intro

## JIE's originality gate

JIE accepts both empirical and theoretical work, but it must be **original in its motivation or modelling structure**. This is the exact bar to frame against — not "important" or "policy-relevant" in the abstract, but **new in motivation or new in modelling**. Choose the axis your paper actually delivers on:

- **Motivation originality**: a new international-economics question, a new fact, or new data the field did not have — e.g., a novel tariff/NTM dataset, firm-level customs records, a new measure of capital flows, exchange-rate pass-through, or sovereign-spread dynamics. Frame it as "the field believed/assumed X; with [new data/fact] we show Y."
- **Modelling originality**: a non-trivial new mechanism or structure — e.g., a new ingredient in an Eaton–Kortum/Melitz trade model, a new channel in a small-open-economy DSGE, or a new sovereign-default mechanism. Frame it as "existing models cannot generate Z; our structure does, and it matters quantitatively because [counterfactual]."

## Frame for the right half of the field

JIE's readership is split between trade and international macro/finance. State which half you are addressing and pitch the contribution in that half's currency (a trade elasticity / welfare gain, or a pass-through / cyclicality / default moment). A contribution invisible to your half's referees will read as incremental even if it is not.

## A one-paragraph contribution statement

Write a single paragraph that names: (1) the international-economics question, (2) the originality axis (motivation or modelling), (3) the concrete novelty (data/fact or mechanism), (4) the headline quantitative result, and (5) why it matters for the field. This paragraph should survive almost verbatim into the introduction and align with the ≤150-word abstract.

## Anti-patterns

- Framing on importance/policy relevance instead of motivation/modelling originality
- Claiming both motivation and modelling novelty when the paper delivers neither sharply
- A contribution legible only to the other half of the field
- "First paper to study [country/period]" as the entire novelty
- A framing the results cannot actually support (over-claiming)


## Worked framing example (illustrative)

A firm-level tariff-war paper. Weak framing: "this is an important and timely study of trade policy." JIE-grade framing names the axis and the currency: "The field measured the tariff war at the aggregate level; with firm-level customs records (motivation originality) we show the export contraction is concentrated in [margin], implying a trade elasticity of about [X] — illustrative — that revises the welfare cost downward." It declares the trade half, leads with a magnitude, and claims originality on one axis (motivation), not both. The same result framed for the macro-finance half — pass-through or current-account currency — would read as incremental to a trade referee, so frame for the half that will referee it.

## Contribution pass for Journal of International Economics

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the cross-border margin, model or identification source, and replication/data readiness; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: international-economics reviewers who separate trade, open-economy macro, international finance, and sovereign-risk audiences.

- **Do the pass:** Translate the result into who learns what, which mechanism changes, and which alternative explanation is ruled out; keep the contribution narrower than the evidence.
- **Return a ledger:** give `claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location` rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
- **Sibling guard:** compare against JPubE for public-finance policy, JDE for development settings, JME for monetary macro emphasis; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
- **Stop condition:** do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's `resources/official-source-map.md` has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

## Output format

```
【Question】(one line, international-economics)
【Originality axis】motivation / modelling structure
【Concrete novelty】new data-fact / new mechanism
【Headline result】(quantitative)
【Field half】trade / macro-finance + why it matters there
【One-paragraph statement】(drafted, intro-ready)
【Next step】jie-tables-figures or jie-writing-style
```

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/external_tools.md`](../../resources/external_tools.md) — data and model toolkits that often constitute the novelty
- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — scope and originality-gate sources