--- name: quarterly-journal-of-economics description: Use when targeting Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) 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. --- # Quarterly Journal of Economics (quarterly-journal-of-economics) ## Journal positioning QJE is the Harvard-edited general-interest journal and one of the economics "top-5" (with AER, JPE, Econometrica, REStud). It is the venue for big, important questions answered with clean, often surprising evidence — papers that change how the profession thinks about a first-order economic question, not careful extensions. The editorial culture prizes a sharp, compelling narrative built around a single consequential result; the readership is the whole discipline, so a niche-field framing reads as a miss. 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 QJE / Oxford University Press site and the editorial submission system. ## When to trigger - The author names QJE (or QJE as a top-5 swing) as the target venue. - A paper has a genuinely big question and a clean natural experiment or compelling new evidence, and the author is choosing among QJE / AER / JPE. - A strong field paper needs re-framing so the question reads as a discipline-wide "this matters" rather than a within-subfield refinement. - The author needs QJE's desk-reject risks and a credible top-5 / top-field alternative list. ## Scope & topic fit - First-order questions across all of economics — development, labor, public, macro-adjacent, political economy, growth, behavioral — selected on importance and general interest. - Empirical papers built on a clean natural experiment, a striking dataset, or a transparent quasi-experimental design that resolves a long-debated question. - Papers with a surprising, consequential headline result that reframes a debate. - Theory and conceptual work when the result is broad and changes the terms of a literature, not a parameterized extension. ## Method & evidence bar - Importance is the first filter and identification is the second: even excellent identification will not survive if the question is not first-order and general-interest. - Quasi-experimental designs must pre-empt the obvious threats with design, not robustness tables; modern DiD estimators, valid instruments, and credible RDD diagnostics are baseline. - The headline result should be large, clean, and economically meaningful — magnitudes that matter, not marginally significant coefficients. - Data and code transparency is mandatory; the AEA-style data and code availability and verification norms apply, with deposit checked before acceptance. ## Structure & house style - The introduction must, on its first pages, pose the big question, deliver the surprising result, and explain why the whole profession should care — QJE rewards a tight, almost essayistic narrative arc. - Lead with the central finding and its magnitude; subordinate mechanism, robustness, and heterogeneity to a disciplined supporting role and an online appendix. - QJE uses an unstructured abstract and JEL codes; secondary analyses live in an appendix so the main text stays a clean story. - Exhibits should let a reader grasp the headline result from a single figure or table. ## 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 "Quarterly Journal of Economics submission guidelines" and the data and code availability policy, and follow the current OUP / editorial versions. - Re-check the submission fee, formatting, abstract/JEL requirements, anonymization expectations, and figure/table standards on the submission system. - Re-check the current data/code deposit and verification workflow (replication package, openICPSR-style archive) — confirm it 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 this is a big, first-order question every economist would recognize as important. - [ ] The contribution is stated as a surprising, consequential result, not as statistical significance. - [ ] The introduction positions the paper against the current top-5 frontier and the debate it resolves. - [ ] Identification threats are addressed by design; the headline magnitude is large and clean. - [ ] Data and code are ready for the availability + verification workflow. ## Common desk-reject triggers - A technically clean paper on a question the editors judge narrow or not general-interest. - A small or fragile headline effect that does not feel consequential, however well-identified. - "First to study X in context Y" framing with no surprising result or conceptual payoff. - Identification the profession no longer accepts (naive TWFE on staggered adoption, weak IV, cosmetic RDD). ## Re-routing decision - General-interest but a better fit elsewhere in the top-5 → `american-economic-review` (broad importance) or `journal-of-political-economy` (tight price-theory logic). - Excellent but narrower applied micro → `aej-applied-economics` or `review-of-economics-and-statistics`; policy-facing → `aej-economic-policy`. - One crisp, single-result idea → `aer-insights`; macro/growth → `aej-macroeconomics`. - Field-leading specialist work → the relevant top field journal (`journal-of-labor-economics`, `journal-of-development-economics`, `journal-of-public-economics`). ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Quarterly Journal of Economics [Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics> [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check] [Re-route suggestion] ```