Imfer workflow

IMFER Workflow Router (imfer-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which imfer- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at IMF Economic Review (IMFER) — the International Monetary Fund's flagship scholarly journal, published by Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature for the IMF, and the successor to IMF Staff Papers. IMFER's center of gravity is international macroeconomics and finance with strong policy relevance: exchange rates and capital flows, global imbalances, financial crises and contagion, sovereign debt, monetary and fiscal policy in open economies, IMF-program-relevant questions, and international spillovers. A distinctive pipeline is the Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference (ARC), whose papers often appear as IMFER special issues.

Operational tells you are at IMFER and not a sibling or generic field journal: the audience is part academic, part policy/institutional — a referee reads as both a frontier researcher and someone who could brief an IMF mission; review is double-blind (anonymize the main file); house style is the Chicago Manual of Style with American spelling; the abstract is italicized and JEL codes are required. Editor-in-chief as of 2026: Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Re-verify volatile specifics on the Springer Nature IMFER pages.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?" on an IMFER-bound paper
• A draft needs its current bottleneck diagnosed (fit, design, theory, evidence, exhibits, style, submission)
• Work is ping-ponging between identification, the model, robustness, and the policy framing
• An IMFER decision letter arrived and the user must switch into revision mode
• The team is weighing IMFER against JIE, JIMF, JMCB, or Economic Policy

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
Question feels narrow / not clearly international-macro with policy relevance	imfer-topic-selection
Contribution vs. JIE / JIMF / the IMF research frontier is fuzzy	imfer-literature-positioning
Cross-country causal design or policy-surprise identification is shaky	imfer-identification
The open-economy model / mechanism is loose or disconnected from the data	imfer-theory-model
Results may be specification-, sample-, or country-composition-sensitive	imfer-robustness
Exhibits are dense; significance asterisks still present; country coverage opaque	imfer-tables-figures
Prose buries the policy implication; abstract/intro do not land for a mixed audience	imfer-writing-style
Data, restricted IMF/central-bank paths, and code need packaging	imfer-replication-package
Likely objections should be war-gamed before submission	imfer-referee-strategy
Ready to submit via Editorial Manager; need a preflight	imfer-submission
An R&R arrived; need a response-letter strategy	imfer-rebuttal

Default order

1. imfer-topic-selection — lock the international-macro question with a policy hook
2. imfer-literature-positioning — stake the contribution vs. JIE/JIMF and the IMF frontier
3. imfer-identification — cross-country / high-frequency / crisis-event identification
4. imfer-theory-model — open-economy model that disciplines or interprets the estimate
5. imfer-robustness — specification, sample, and country-composition stability
6. imfer-tables-figures — exhibits with transparent country coverage, no asterisks
7. imfer-writing-style — make the idea land for the dual academic/policy audience (intro last)
8. imfer-replication-package — assemble the data/code package with restricted-data paths
9. imfer-referee-strategy — anticipate the dual-referee objections
10. imfer-submission — Editorial Manager double-blind preflight
11. imfer-rebuttal — after the R&R

imfer-writing-style is a late polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification, the model, and robustness settle.

Routing by paper archetype

IMFER spans several international-macro branches; the binding constraint differs by archetype.

Archetype	Likely first bottleneck	Enter at
cross-country panel (capital flows, debt, crises)	country composition + spillover identification	imfer-identification → imfer-robustness
high-frequency policy-surprise (monetary/FX, spillovers)	clean surprise series + exclusion	imfer-identification
open-economy DSGE / international-finance model	parameter identification + counterfactual validity	imfer-theory-model → imfer-identification
crisis event study / narrative	event windows + confounding macro shocks	imfer-identification → imfer-robustness
ARC / special-issue invited paper	sharpening the policy contribution to the issue theme	imfer-topic-selection → imfer-literature-positioning

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My cross-country panel shows capital-flow controls dampen crisis risk, but a referee says the result is driven by a handful of Asian economies and the controls are endogenous to the crisis." That is two distinct IMFER pushbacks — country-composition fragility (owned by imfer-robustness) and policy endogeneity (owned by imfer-identification). Route to identification first to defend the design, then to robustness to show the effect survives dropping the Asian bloc; only once the coefficient is stable do you return to imfer-tables-figures and imfer-rebuttal.

Anti-patterns

• Treating IMFER like JIE (pure international trade/finance theory-and-empirics, less policy framing) or JIMF (broader, faster, less selective)
• Polishing prose before identification, the model, and robustness are stable
• Letting the online appendix carry a claim the main text must establish
• Forgetting the policy "so what" — a clean estimate with no IMF-relevant implication reads as the wrong journal
• Leaving author-identifying traces in a double-blind main file

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:          -> imfer-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:                -> imfer-submission
elif anticipating_referees:          -> imfer-referee-strategy
elif data_code_packaging:            -> imfer-replication-package
elif exhibits_or_significance:       -> imfer-tables-figures
elif results_fragile:                -> imfer-robustness
elif model_loose:                    -> imfer-theory-model
elif identification_shaky:           -> imfer-identification
elif claim_or_positioning_fuzzy:     -> imfer-contribution / imfer-literature-positioning
else:                                -> imfer-topic-selection