--- name: rof-rebuttal description: Use when drafting a Review of Finance response letter and revision plan after an R&R, especially under the two-round philosophy, top-three-finance standards, code/data conditions, and page-cap constraints. --- # Review of Finance Rebuttal Use this after an RoF decision letter. Because RoF aims to reach a final decision by the second round, the first revision is your one real chance — make the round-one response decisive rather than holding arguments back. ## When to trigger - An RoF R&R or first-round decision with referee reports has arrived. - You need to sequence revisions and draft a point-by-point response. - A second-round report raises a new concern and you must decide how to handle it. ## Response strategy - Separate the referees' major concerns required for publication from their suggestions, mirroring the two-bucket structure RoF asks referees to use; resolve every major concern fully before polishing suggestions. - Answer the finance contribution first, then identification, theory, data, robustness, and exposition. - Show, don't assert: point each response to the exact revised table, figure, section, and page; quote short new text. - Keep the revised manuscript within the hard 60-page total cap (appendices, bibliography, figures, tables all count). - If a new referee concern appears in round two, check whether it was raised in round one and whether it is tied to your changes; under RoF's two-round philosophy a genuinely new, unrelated concern may fall outside scope — raise this politely, via the editor, and rarely. - Authors own the paper: you may decline a suggestion that would harm it, with reasons. - Update replication programs, pseudo-data, logs, and the Data Availability Statement alongside manuscript revisions. ## Point-by-point skeleton ```text Referee 1, Major Concern 1 (identification): Restate: Action: Result: Text: "" Referee 1, Suggestion 1: adopted / adapted because ... / declined because ... Editor letter (1 page): each major concern -> its fix; page-cap accounting (what moved to the internet appendix); code, pseudo-data, and DAS updates shipped with this revision. ``` ## Triage table for common RoF report lines | The report says | Likely intent | Round-one response | |---|---|---| | "Identification is not convincing" (major) | spine doubt | new design evidence — pre-trends, placebo, alternative estimator — not prose | | "The magnitude seems implausible" | calibration doubt | benchmark against two published estimates; reconcile or correct | | "Please also examine X, Y, and Z" (suggestion) | breadth wish | run the cheap ones into the internet appendix; decline scope creep with reasons | | "The authors should cite [their papers]" | citation nudge | cite when genuinely relevant given RoF's author-responsibility norm; otherwise draw the boundary politely | | "The European sample limits generality" | external validity | add the US or cross-region contrast, or argue why the institution isolates a universal force | ## Worked example — page-cap arithmetic in the revision Illustrative. The R&R asks for three robustness exercises and a heterogeneity split. Four new tables at roughly 0.8 pages each plus notes cost about 3.5 pages against the hard 60-page ceiling. The plan: one new body table answering the bucket-1 concern; three exhibits to the internet appendix with one-line pointers; 1.5 pages of introduction trimmed — net +0.3 pages. State this accounting in the editor letter so the cap is visibly respected without burying the new evidence. ## Resubmission hygiene - Refresh the double-blind scrub: new acknowledgements, conference thanks, or repository links added during revision are classic anonymity leaks at this journal. - If results changed materially, regenerate logs and the pseudo-dataset so the package matches the revised exhibits — a stale packet undermines the response letter. - Verify current resubmission mechanics and any fees on Editorial Express and the journal's current author guidelines before uploading. ## Anti-patterns - Treating suggestions as binding while under-addressing a major concern. - Drafting the letter before the revised manuscript exists. - Saving a key result or argument for round two — it may simply be ignored. - Defensive, adjective-heavy pushback instead of new evidence. ## Output format ```text [Decision] R&R / reject-resubmit / conditional acceptance / other [Revision thesis] [Required concerns] manuscript change> [Suggestions] [Code/data updates] ```