Aejmic referee strategy

Skill brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills/AEJ-Microeconomics-Skills/skills/aejmic-referee-strategy

Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. ｜覆盖主流期刊的 Claude Code/Codex 期刊技能包，从选题、识别策略到表格规范与审稿回复全流程，助你快速发论文。

Install

npx -y skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aejmic-referee-strategy

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What its author says it does

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Use when anticipating referee objections or calibrating review expectations for an American Economic Journal: Microeconomics (AEJ: Micro) manuscript before submission. Pre-empts the objections theory referees raise and reads the editorial process; it does not draft the response letter (see aejmic-rebuttal).

SKILL.md

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Referee Strategy (aejmic-referee-strategy)

When to trigger

Before submission, to stress-test the paper against the objections experts will raise
Deciding whether the contribution clears the desk-reject bar
Choosing JEL codes / framing that route the paper to the right co-editor
Unsure what the AEJ: Micro review process looks like

The AEJ: Micro process (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准)

AEJ: Micro uses single-blind review via the AEA submission system: the referee sees the author, but referees are anonymous to authors. There is no anonymization burden — reputation is visible, so the paper must stand on rigor.
There is a submission fee (AEA member $200 high-income / $100 middle / $0 low; nonmember higher — 检索于 2026-06，volatile), and JEL classification per AEA practice helps route the paper to the right co-editor and expert referees.
Decisions run the usual ladder: desk reject → reject after review → R&R (minor/major) → accept. Theory referees verify proofs; a flawed or non-tight proof is a common reject reason.
Re-confirm fee, timelines, and co-editor list on the official AEA AEJ: Micro page (see resources/official-source-map.md).

Objections AEJ: Micro referees actually raise — and the pre-emption

Likely objection	Pre-empt it by (skill)
"The result is a knife-edge artifact of assumption A."	Name the load-bearing assumption; show necessity / a counterexample on failure (`aejmic-identification`)
"This is too specialized / maximal-generality for AEJ: Micro."	Re-frame the broad-interest message; cut generality that hides it (`aejmic-topic-selection`, `aejmic-theory-model`)
"How does this differ from [closest result]?"	State the theorem-relative delta in one sentence (`aejmic-literature-positioning`)
"Does it survive [a continuum / asymmetry / perturbation]?"	Provide the earned extension or a clean negative result (`aejmic-robustness`)
"A step in the proof is asserted, not shown."	Complete the lemma scaffolding; self-contained proofs (`aejmic-replication-package`)
"The model is overloaded; the mechanism is invisible."	Reduce to the minimal environment; lead with intuition (`aejmic-theory-model`, `aejmic-writing-style`)
"This is an empirical paper, not theory."	Either restore the theoretical contribution or redirect to AEJ: Applied (`aejmic-topic-selection`)
(Applied) "Identification / inference is shaky; asterisks used."	Branch B/C identification; SEs not asterisks (`aejmic-identification`, `aejmic-tables-figures`)

Checklist

Listed the three most likely referee objections for this paper and mapped each to a fix
The load-bearing assumption is named and defended before submission
The theorem-relative delta is crisp (one sentence)
The broad-interest message is explicit (not specialist-only)
Every proof step a referee will check is complete
JEL codes chosen to route to the right co-editor (single-blind: no anonymization needed)
Decided the venue is right (not actually an AEJ: Applied paper)

Anti-patterns

Submitting without anticipating the single most obvious expert objection
Relying on generality to impress when the audience-fit objection is the real risk
Leaving a checkable proof gap for a referee to find
Mis-routing via vague JEL codes so a non-expert co-editor handles it
Assuming anonymity protects a thin result — single-blind means the referee knows whose work it is

Worked vignette (illustrative)

Before submitting a matching paper, the author lists likely objections: (1) "rides on substitutability" → already pre-empted in aejmic-identification with a counterexample; (2) "how does it differ from the deferred-acceptance literature?" → one-sentence delta ready; (3) "is the existence proof complete?" → lemma scaffolding done. The remaining risk is audience fit, so the intro is rewritten to foreground the broad market-design message rather than the technical condition. JEL codes C78/D47 route it to a market-design co-editor.

Output format

【Top 3 likely objections】[...]  →  【Fix / owning skill】[...]
【Load-bearing assumption defended】[Y/N]
【Delta crisp】[Y/N]   【Broad-interest message explicit】[Y/N]
【Proof gaps closed】[Y/N]
【Routing】JEL codes [...] (single-blind — no anonymization)
【Venue confirmed】AEJ: Micro (not AEJ: Applied)? [Y/N]
【Next step】aejmic-submission

Supplementary resources

../../resources/README.md — links to the shared reviewer-objection checklist (applied subset)