restat-topic-selection
Use when deciding whether an applied-economics project fits The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) rather than AER / AEJ:Applied / J. Econometrics / a field journal, and sharpening the question to REStat's empirical-and-measurement bar. Decides venue fit and frames the question; it does not run the analysis.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill restat-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 & Venue Fit (restat-topic-selection) ## When to trigger - A project is between venues: REStat vs AER / AEJ:Applied vs *J. Econometrics* vs a field journal - The question is interesting but you cannot say why it belongs at REStat specifically - The contribution is a method but you are unsure REStat (applied, not methods-development) is the home - You have a clean dataset / measurement advance and need to frame it as a REStat question ## The REStat fit bar REStat publishes **applied economics and applied econometrics** with a long **measurement tradition**: it wants a substantive economic question answered with **credible identification** *or* a **careful measurement / data contribution** that moves an applied literature. It is **empirical-first** and broad across fields (labor, public, development, trade, IO, health, environment, urban, macro-empirics), wider than a field journal but more specialized than AER. Two REStat sweet spots that distinguish it from siblings: (1) a **clean causal estimate** of a parameter an applied literature cares about; (2) a **measurement or methods-applied** advance — a new index, a better-measured construct, a corrected bias, an estim
- When to trigger
- The REStat fit bar
- Fit decision table
- The one-sentence test
- Checklist
- Anti-patterns
- Worked vignette: a measurement paper finding its home (illustrative)
- Output format
What does the restat-topic-selection skill do?
Use when deciding whether an applied-economics project fits The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) rather than AER / AEJ:Applied / J. Econometrics / a field journal, and sharpening the question to REStat's empirical-and-measurement bar. Decides venue fit and frames the question; it does not run the analysis.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill restat-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.