jpe-topic-selection
Use when scoping or framing a research question for a Journal of Political Economy (JPE) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "JPE-shaped" — i.e., a mechanism-driven economic question, not an atheoretical correlation. Diagnoses fit and frames the contribution; it does not design the empirics.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jpe-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 & Fit (jpe-topic-selection) ## When to trigger - You have data or a result but not yet a sharp economic question - You are unsure whether the paper belongs at JPE, a field journal, or a methods journal - The pitch is "X is correlated with Y" with no mechanism or model behind it - You are deciding between JPE proper and the **2023-launched companion journals** (JPE Microeconomics, lead editor John List; JPE Macroeconomics, lead editor Greg Kaplan) ## The JPE fit test JPE (founded 1892, edited at the University of Chicago; lead editor Esteban Rossi-Hansberg) publishes the full breadth of economics, but with a premium on **rigorous economic reasoning** and a **price-theoretic / mechanism-driven** angle — the Chicago lineage of Becker's "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach" (JPE 1968) and Black and Scholes's "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities" (JPE 1973). Score the idea against these five questions before committing: 1. **Mechanism** — Can you state the economic mechanism in one sentence, and does the paper test *that mechanism* (not just a net effect)? 2. **Theory linkage** — Does economic theory make a prediction here that your evidence can con
- When to trigger
- The JPE fit test
- Contribution framing (do this before writing the intro)
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Output format
What does the jpe-topic-selection skill do?
Use when scoping or framing a research question for a Journal of Political Economy (JPE) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "JPE-shaped" — i.e., a mechanism-driven economic question, not an atheoretical correlation. Diagnoses fit and frames the contribution; it does not design the empirics.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jpe-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.