---
name: jie-literature-positioning
description: Use to position a Journal of International Economics (JIE) manuscript against the international-trade or open-economy-macro frontier — staking the contribution against gravity/structural-trade or international-finance literatures without writing a standalone survey. Sharpens positioning; it does not draft the paper.
---

# Literature Positioning (jie-literature-positioning)

## When to trigger

- The contribution is not yet stated sharply against the existing international-economics literature
- A reviewer might say "this is already known" or "wrong comparison set"
- You are writing a literature section that reads like a survey instead of a claim

## How to position at JIE

JIE is a field journal, so positioning happens **within international economics**, against the right sub-literature — not against all of economics. Pin the paper to its frontier and state, in one or two sentences, what you add. Choose the comparison set deliberately:

- **Trade**: gravity and structural gravity (Anderson–van Wincoop, Head–Mayer; PPML à la Santos Silva–Tenreyro), Eaton–Kortum / Melitz quantitative trade, commercial-policy and trade-agreement work (Staiger and co-authors), the China-shock / shift-share exposure literature, GVCs and trade in value added, spatial/economic-geography.
- **International macro/finance**: open-economy macro and the small-open-economy/RBC-NK tradition (Uribe and co-authors), exchange-rate disconnect and pass-through (Engel and co-authors), sovereign default (Eaton–Gersovitz, Arellano), capital flows and the global financial cycle, international pricing and currency of invoicing.

State the contribution as a **delta**: "Relative to [frontier paper(s)], we [new data / new mechanism / new identification], which changes [quantitative or qualitative conclusion]." Cite the editors' and the field's anchor papers where genuinely relevant — but do not pad.

## What referees check

- Are the closest two or three papers cited and correctly distinguished?
- Is the claimed gap real, or already filled in a paper you missed?
- Does the positioning match your scope half (trade vs macro-finance)?
- Is the contribution original in **motivation or modelling structure**, per JIE's gate, and is that originality legible here?

## Anti-patterns

- A chronological survey instead of a staked claim
- Positioning a trade paper only against macro work, or vice versa
- Comparing to a broad genre ("the gravity literature") instead of the closest papers
- Over-claiming a gap that a recent JIE/AER/JIE-adjacent paper already closed
- Ignoring the handling-editor's own frontier when it is the obvious comparison


## Worked delta example (illustrative)

A firm-level tariff-war paper positions on the trade side. The closest frontier is the China-shock / shift-share exposure literature and the structural-gravity tradition. A weak positioning says "we contribute to the trade-policy literature." A JIE-grade delta names the closest two or three papers and states the gap precisely: "Relative to aggregate-exposure studies of the tariff war, we use firm-level customs records to show the export response is concentrated in [a margin those papers cannot see], which revises the implied trade elasticity downward." That sentence is legible to a trade referee, defends a real gap rather than a genre, and ties the novelty to the originality axis (new data / new fact). Check that no recent JIE or AER paper already closed it before staking the claim.

## Positioning 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:** Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
- **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

```
【Scope half】trade / macro-finance
【Frontier (closest 2-3)】[paper → what it did]
【Your delta】new data / new mechanism / new identification → changed conclusion
【Originality framing】motivation or modelling structure
【Gap defended against】[recent papers that might pre-empt you]
【Next step】jie-identification-strategy
```

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/external_tools.md`](../../resources/external_tools.md) — data and tools that often define a contribution's novelty
- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — editor roster (to identify frontier anchors)