aejpol-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether a project fits AEJ: Economic Policy rather than J. Public Economics, AEJ: Applied, or AER, and when sharpening the policy question and its welfare stake for an AEJ: Economic Policy manuscript. Frames fit and the policy-question-first contribution; it does not design the identification or run estimation.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aejpol-topic-selection --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.
# Topic Selection & Policy-Question Fit (aejpol-topic-selection) ## When to trigger - You have a clean empirical result but are unsure it is "an AEJ: Policy paper" - The project could plausibly go to J. Public Economics, AEJ: Applied, or AER and you must pick - A referee or colleague says the question is "narrow," "not a policy paper," or "so what?" - You can state a finding but not yet a **policy question** with a **welfare / cost-benefit / distributional** stake ## The AEJ: Policy bar — lead with the policy question AEJ: Policy publishes the **economic analysis OF policy**: a paper is built around a **policy question** ("should this tax / mandate / subsidy / regulation exist, expand, or change, and at what welfare cost?") whose answer carries a **welfare, cost-benefit, or distributional** implication of **broad interest** to the AEA readership. Two halves must both be present from the first page: 1. **A real policy lever.** A specific instrument someone could pull — a credit, a tax schedule, an eligibility rule, an emissions standard, a transfer, a mandate, an enforcement regime. Not just "an interesting natural experiment." 2. **A counterfactual / welfare reading.** What changes
- When to trigger
- The AEJ: Policy bar — lead with the policy question
- Policy areas in scope
- Fit decision table (route by the dominant pull)
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Three questions that decide fit fast
- Worked vignette (illustrative)
- Referee pushback mapped to the fix
- Output format
What does the aejpol-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether a project fits AEJ: Economic Policy rather than J. Public Economics, AEJ: Applied, or AER, and when sharpening the policy question and its welfare stake for an AEJ: Economic Policy manuscript. Frames fit and the policy-question-first contribution; it does not design the identification or run estimation.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aejpol-topic-selection --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.