--- name: journal-of-the-european-economic-association description: Use when targeting Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA) or deciding whether a general-interest 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. --- # Journal of the European Economic Association (journal-of-the-european-economic-association) ## Journal positioning The Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA) is the general-interest flagship of the European Economic Association, a broad, rigorous, near-top-5 outlet publishing the best work across all fields of economics. The paper that wins here has a first-order question, a clean method, and a result of interest beyond its subfield — the same general-interest bar as the top-5, with a strong European intellectual base and a global readership. The audience is the whole profession, so the contribution must read as important to economists outside your field. 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 publisher's own site or submission system. ## When to trigger - The author names JEEA (or a near-top-5 general-interest outlet) as the target venue. - A paper has a clean design and general interest, and the author is choosing between JEEA and the top-5 or a top field journal. - A strong field paper needs re-framing so the contribution reads as discipline-wide rather than niche. - The author needs JEEA's desk-reject risks and a credible general-interest / top-field alternative list before submitting. ## Scope & topic fit - First-order questions across all fields of economics — micro, macro, labor, public, IO, trade, development, theory — judged on general interest. - Empirical papers with a transparent, defensible identification strategy and a result that travels beyond one context. - Theory papers whose results are general and consequential, not a narrow extension. - High-quality work where the contribution is clear and the execution is rigorous, regardless of field or geography. ## Method & evidence bar - Identification is the desk filter: naive TWFE on staggered treatment, weak instruments, and cosmetic RDD are treated as fatal; modern estimators and correct inference are baseline. - Empirical work must pre-empt the obvious threats (selection, measurement, confounders) by design, with robustness and attention to external validity. - Theory and structural papers need clearly stated assumptions, identified parameters, and results that generalize. - Data and code transparency is expected; the standard is the same as the top general-interest journals. ## Structure & house style - The introduction states the question, the contribution, the approach, and the headline result early, and says explicitly why a non-specialist should care. - Make the marginal contribution non-overlapping and explicit against the current general-interest frontier; separate the method/identification advance from the empirical finding. - The journal uses an unstructured abstract and JEL codes; an online appendix carries robustness and secondary results. - Exhibits are publication-clean and self-contained; 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 "Journal of the European Economic Association submission guidelines / author instructions" and follow the current EEA / Oxford University Press version, not a third-party broker's copy. - Re-check formatting, abstract/JEL codes, reference style, anonymization expectations, the online-appendix policy, and the data & code availability requirements. - Re-check the current replication/data-deposit expectation and any EEA-membership or submission routes on the editorial system. - 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 general-interest / 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 availability and replication workflow. ## Common desk-reject triggers - A well-executed but narrow field paper with no general-interest hook. - Identification 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, with mechanism and external validity left thin. ## Re-routing decision - Top-5 ambition with a discipline-wide result → `american-economic-review`, `quarterly-journal-of-economics`, or `journal-of-political-economy`. - Strong applied micro narrower than general interest → `aej-applied-economics` or `review-of-economics-and-statistics`. - Field-leading specialist work → the relevant field journal (`journal-of-labor-economics`, `journal-of-public-economics`, `journal-of-international-economics`, `rand-journal-of-economics`). - A broad European applied/theory paper just below this tier → `the-economic-journal`; pure theory → `journal-of-economic-theory`. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Journal of the European Economic Association [Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics> [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check] [Re-route suggestion] ```