Eer workflow

EER Workflow Router (eer-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which eer- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the European Economic Review (EER) — Elsevier's long-standing (founded 1969) general-interest European economics journal, hosted on ScienceDirect (ISSN 0014-2921). EER publishes all fields of economics, theory and empirical — macro, micro, labor, public, IO, international, finance, behavioral — and rewards papers of broad interest with a credible identification or theoretical contribution, not narrow field-specialist increments.

Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as EER. Operational tells that you are at EER and not a sibling or a field journal: submission is via Editorial Manager (editorialmanager.com/eerev); review is single-anonymized (single-blind — referees see author identities) (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准); there is a non-refundable submission fee (EUR 125 regular / EUR 100 PhD-student; Research4Life Group A waiver) (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准); accepted empirical/simulation/experimental papers must meet the mandatory replication policy (data, code, computational details before publication); house style is Elsevier-economics (structured abstract, JEL codes, keywords, research highlights, declaration of interest, standard errors reported). The "European" in the title is institutional history, not a scope restriction — topics need not be about Europe. Editors as of 2026 include Evi Pappa, David K. Levine, Stefania Garetto, Peter Rupert, Robert Sauer (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Re-verify volatile specifics on the official Elsevier/ScienceDirect pages.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?"
• A draft needs its current bottleneck diagnosed
• Work is ping-ponging between identification, theory, writing, and the response letter
• An EER decision letter arrived and the user needs to switch into revision mode

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
Question feels narrow / field-specialist, not general-interest	eer-topic-selection
Contribution vs. the literature is fuzzy or oversold	eer-literature-positioning
Empirical causal design is shaky (OLS+controls, naive TWFE, weak IV)	eer-identification
A theory/model is needed or the existing one is loose	eer-theory-model
Results may not survive specification / sample / inference changes	eer-robustness
Exhibits are dense; significance asterisks dominate; no SEs	eer-tables-figures
Prose buries the idea; abstract/intro/highlights do not land	eer-writing-style
Data/code deposit, README, replication-policy prep	eer-replication-package
Want to anticipate referee objections before submitting	eer-referee-strategy
Ready to submit via Editorial Manager; need a preflight	eer-submission
Received an R&R; need a response-letter strategy	eer-rebuttal

Default order

1. eer-topic-selection — confirm the question is general-interest, not field-niche
2. eer-literature-positioning — stake the contribution vs. the frontier (incl. vs. JEEA/EJ)
3. eer-identification — make the empirical causal design credible
4. eer-theory-model — build/tighten the model or conceptual frame
5. eer-robustness — stress-test estimates to specs, samples, inference
6. eer-tables-figures — exhibits with SEs, no significance-star worship
7. eer-writing-style — make the idea land (abstract + intro + highlights last)
8. eer-replication-package — assemble the mandatory-replication-policy deposit
9. eer-referee-strategy — pre-empt the objections a single-blind referee will raise
10. eer-submission — Editorial Manager preflight (fee, format, declarations)
11. eer-rebuttal — after the R&R

eer-writing-style is a late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification/theory settle. For a pure-theory paper, eer-theory-model precedes eer-identification (or replaces it).

Anti-patterns

• Treating EER as a Europe-only or field journal — the bar is general interest across all of economics
• Polishing exhibits (eer-tables-figures) while the identification is still moving
• Deferring eer-replication-package until acceptance — assemble the deposit as you build results
• Forgetting the non-refundable submission fee and submitting an out-of-scope paper that desk-rejects
• Confusing EER with JEEA (the EEA's own flagship) or The Economic Journal (RES flagship)

Routing by paper archetype

EER spans theory and many empirical fields; the bottleneck differs by archetype. Read the row, then enter the chain at the right link.

Archetype	Likely first bottleneck	Enter at
applied micro / labor / public causal design	staggered-DID or weak-IV credibility	eer-identification
macro / quantitative model	model discipline + mapping to data	eer-theory-model → eer-robustness
pure theory / micro-theory	sharpness + generality of the result	eer-theory-model
experiment / behavioral	pre-registration, balance, MHT, instructions	eer-identification → eer-replication-package

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My labor paper uses event-study DID on a staggered minimum-wage rollout, but a referee says the parallel-trends story is thin and the result might be driven by one state." Two distinct EER pushbacks — design credibility (heterogeneity-robust DID, clean pre-trends) owned by eer-identification, and fragility (leave-one-state-out, alternative samples) owned by eer-robustness. Route to eer-identification first; once the event-study leads are flat and the modern estimator agrees (say the effect settles at -2.1% employment, s.e. 0.8, illustrative), move to eer-robustness, then eer-tables-figures and eer-rebuttal.

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:        -> eer-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:              -> eer-submission
elif anticipating_referees:        -> eer-referee-strategy
elif deposit_or_replication:       -> eer-replication-package
elif exhibits_or_significance:     -> eer-tables-figures
elif results_may_be_fragile:       -> eer-robustness
elif needs_model:                  -> eer-theory-model
elif identification_shaky:         -> eer-identification
elif claim_or_positioning_fuzzy:   -> eer-literature-positioning
else:                              -> eer-topic-selection