jde-writing-style
Use when polishing prose for a Journal of Development Economics (JDE) manuscript so the development question, answer, and policy stakes land for a field audience. A late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification and framing are settled.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jde-writing-style --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.
# Writing Style (jde-writing-style) ## When to trigger - The abstract states a setting but not a finding with a magnitude - The introduction buries the development question under methods or data description - The prose mixes American and British English, or reads inconsistently - Identification and contribution are settled and the paper needs its final polish ## The JDE prose bar JDE readers are development economists; the writing has to make a **first-order development question and its answer** land quickly, with policy stakes explicit. Principles: - **Abstract states the finding with a number.** Lead with the development question, the design in a phrase, and the headline effect in welfare-relevant units — not just "we study X in country Y." Regular submissions have a **250-word** abstract cap; pre-results Stage 1 proposals cap the abstract at **150 words**. - **Introduction as an argument.** Question → why it matters for development → setting and design in a few sentences → headline result with magnitude → contribution relative to the frontier → roadmap. Avoid a literature-survey opening. - **Policy and welfare made visible.** Translate effects into terms a development economist
- When to trigger
- The JDE prose bar
- Tactics
- Abstract rewrite (worked, illustrative)
- Prose pushback and the fix
- Calibration anchors (hedged)
- Anti-patterns
- Style execution pass for Journal of Development Economics
- Output format
What does the jde-writing-style skill do?
Use when polishing prose for a Journal of Development Economics (JDE) manuscript so the development question, answer, and policy stakes land for a field audience. A late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification and framing are settled.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jde-writing-style --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.