aejpol-referee-strategy
Use when anticipating how AEJ: Economic Policy referees and editors will read a manuscript, before submission or before an R&R, to pre-empt the objections that sink policy-evaluation papers. Maps likely pushback to fixes and calibrates expectations; it does not write the response letter (see aejpol-rebuttal) or fix the identification.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aejpol-referee-strategy --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Referee Strategy — Reading the Manuscript as an AEJ: Policy Referee (aejpol-referee-strategy) ## When to trigger - Before submitting: you want to find the objections a referee will raise first - Deciding whether the paper is ready or needs another round of work - Calibrating expectations about the AEA single-blind process and timeline - Triaging which weaknesses to fix vs. disclose before submission ## How AEJ: Policy referees read AEJ: Policy reviews are **single-blind** through the AEA system (referees see the authors; authors do not see referees), refereed by economists who expect both **credible causal evidence** and a **policy-relevant welfare reading**. A referee typically tests four things in order; a paper dies at the first one it fails: 1. **Is it a policy paper of broad interest?** (the `aejpol-topic-selection` test) — a clean estimate with no policy lever or welfare reading invites a "better suited to a field journal / AEJ: Applied" rejection. 2. **Is the causal claim credible?** (the `aejpol-identification` test) — staggered TWFE, asserted parallel trends, a weak instrument, or an over-generalized RDD are the usual kill shots. 3. **Does the welfare/policy reading foll
- When to trigger
- How AEJ: Policy referees read
- Pre-empting the predictable objections
- Calibrating expectations
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Worked vignette (illustrative)
- Output format
What does the aejpol-referee-strategy skill do?
Use when anticipating how AEJ: Economic Policy referees and editors will read a manuscript, before submission or before an R&R, to pre-empt the objections that sink policy-evaluation papers. Maps likely pushback to fixes and calibrates expectations; it does not write the response letter (see aejpol-rebuttal) or fix the identification.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aejpol-referee-strategy --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.