aeri-referee-strategy
Use when calibrating expectations for the fast, decisive American Economic Review: Insights (AER: Insights) review process — conditional-accept-or-reject decisions, the single-round model, and pre-empting the objections a short paper cannot afford. Explains the process and stress-tests the paper; it does not write the response letter (see aeri-rebuttal).
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aeri-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 & the Fast Review Model (aeri-referee-strategy) ## When to trigger - Before submission, to understand how AER: Insights decides and what referees punish - Deciding whether the paper can survive a process with **no traditional R&R** - Anticipating the one or two objections that would sink a short paper - Choosing whether to risk AER: Insights vs. a journal that offers multiple rounds ## The AER: Insights process (official AEA baseline checked 2026-06-20) AER: Insights runs **single-blind** AEA peer review: authors are visible to referees, while referees remain anonymous to authors. It is deliberately **fast and decisive**: - **First decision is conditional accept or reject** — there is **no traditional revise-and-resubmit** category. - **Conditional accept** means the editor expects to publish subject to changes in the decision letter; authors usually get about **8 weeks** to return the revision, which is **normally not sent back to referees** for a second round. - **Reject is reject** — there is no iterative path to wear referees down. The screening is sharp: a paper over the word/exhibit cap is **returned unreviewed**. - Editor as of 2026: **Matthew Gentzkow** (
- When to trigger
- The AER: Insights process (official AEA baseline checked 2026-06-20)
- Pre-empt the objections a short paper cannot survive
- Calibrating the bet
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
What does the aeri-referee-strategy skill do?
Use when calibrating expectations for the fast, decisive American Economic Review: Insights (AER: Insights) review process — conditional-accept-or-reject decisions, the single-round model, and pre-empting the objections a short paper cannot afford. Explains the process and stress-tests the paper; it does not write the response letter (see aeri-rebuttal).
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aeri-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.