imfer-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether a question is right for an IMF Economic Review (IMFER) manuscript — international macro-finance with genuine policy relevance and an IMF-program or global-institution audience. Tests fit and scope; it does not run the identification (imfer-identification) or stake the contribution (imfer-literature-positioning).
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill imfer-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 (imfer-topic-selection) ## When to trigger - You have a question but are unsure it clears IMFER's **international-macro-with-policy-relevance** bar - The paper could plausibly go to JIE, JIMF, JMCB, AEJ: Macro, or *Economic Policy* and you must decide - A reduced-form estimate is clean but you cannot name the **policy "so what"** the IMF audience needs - You were invited to the Jacques Polak ARC / a special issue and must align the question to the issue theme - A coauthor asks whether the topic is "too domestic" or "too narrowly technical" for IMFER ## What IMFER actually wants IMFER is the IMF's flagship scholarly journal: it rewards **rigorous research on international macroeconomics and finance whose findings speak to policy** — exchange rates and capital flows, global imbalances, financial crises and contagion, sovereign debt and default, monetary and fiscal policy in open economies, IMF-program-relevant questions, and cross-border spillovers. The double audience is the test: a paper must satisfy a frontier referee on method *and* give someone who could brief an IMF mission a usable implication. A purely domestic US-macro question, or a methods paper with no o
- When to trigger
- What IMFER actually wants
- The IMF Staff Papers inheritance
- The fit test (run before writing the intro)
- The ARC / special-issue lens
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Worked vignette (illustrative)
- Referee pushback mapped to the fit fix
- Output format
What does the imfer-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether a question is right for an IMF Economic Review (IMFER) manuscript — international macro-finance with genuine policy relevance and an IMF-program or global-institution audience. Tests fit and scope; it does not run the identification (imfer-identification) or stake the contribution (imfer-literature-positioning).
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill imfer-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.