Ecopol referee strategy

Panel & Discussant Strategy (ecopol-referee-strategy)

When to trigger

• A paper has been (or is likely to be) invited to present at an EP biannual conference
• You need to anticipate the two discussants and the live panel debate before standing up
• A coauthor assumes EP runs anonymous refereeing and is preparing the wrong way
• The paper is strong academically but you have not stress-tested the policy angle a policy discussant will press
• You must decide what to fix before the conference vs. what to commit to revising after

EP review is a panel, not a referee pool — plan for it

This is the most EP-specific skill in the pack, because EP does not run standard double-blind refereeing. Papers are selected by the Managing Editor / Panel, presented at a biannual conference (summer and winter), where two invited discussants — chosen to bring an academic and a policy perspective — act as the referees, debate the paper live in front of the panel and audience, and whose written comments are published alongside the final paper (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). This changes the strategy in three ways:

1. Reviewers are named and public. You can (and should) anticipate the specific people and institutions likely to discuss your paper. Their comments will appear in print next to yours — they have an incentive to be sharp.
2. The debate is live and oral. Unlike a referee letter you answer in writing, you respond in real time. You cannot run a new regression mid-session. Pre-empt, don't defer.
3. Two perspectives, two failure modes. The academic discussant attacks rigor; the policy discussant attacks relevance, magnitude, and legibility. A paper can pass one and fail the other.

War-game the two discussants

Discussant persona	What they will press	Pre-empt by
Academic (subfield expert)	identification, estimator choice, robustness, "have you tried…"	ecopol-identification + ecopol-robustness done thoroughly; top 3 objections answered in text
Policy (ministry/central bank/Commission)	magnitude, welfare/cost framing, external validity, "what do I do with this?"	ecopol-tables-figures units + a crisp policy bottom line; legible main text

Concretely: name two plausible real discussants for your paper (by subfield and by institution, not necessarily by individual), then read your draft as each of them. Where each would object, decide: fix now, or prepare a one-paragraph live answer.

Pre-conference moves

• Build an objection ledger: every anticipated point, its source persona, and your response (fix vs. defend).
• Prepare the live answers to the top objections you choose not to pre-fix — a sentence and, ideally, a backup slide/appendix exhibit.
• Make the policy bottom line unmissable so the policy discussant cannot say "I don't know what to do with this."
• Tighten the central magnitude's robustness — the most common live takedown is "your number isn't stable."
• Have the replication package ready (ecopol-replication-package) so a provenance challenge is answerable on the spot.

Checklist

• Two plausible discussant personas named (academic subfield + policy institution)
• Draft read as each persona; objections logged with fix-vs-defend decisions
• Top academic objections (identification/robustness) pre-empted in the main text
• Policy bottom line is crisp and unmissable for the policy discussant
• Central magnitude's robustness tightened against the "your number moves" attack
• Live answers prepared for objections you chose not to pre-fix
• Replication package ready for a provenance challenge at the conference
• You are not preparing as if for anonymous written refereeing

Anti-patterns

• Treating EP review as anonymous refereeing and writing a defensive response letter instead of pre-empting live
• Preparing only for the academic discussant and getting blindsided by the policy discussant (or vice versa)
• Deferring a known weakness to "we'll address it in revision" when it will be debated live and published
• No crisp policy takeaway, so the policy discussant fills the vacuum with skepticism
• Ignoring that the discussants' published comments become a permanent part of the record

Output format

【Journal】Economic Policy (EP)
【Skill】ecopol-referee-strategy
【Review model】panel + two named discussants (NOT anonymous refereeing)
【Academic discussant】subfield → top objections → fix/defend
【Policy discussant】institution → top objections → fix/defend
【Objection ledger】top 3 with responses
【Live-answer prep】backup exhibits ready? Y/N
【Next skill】ecopol-submission