Jimf workflow

JIMF Workflow Router (jimf-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which jimf- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the Journal of International Money and Finance (JIMF) — Elsevier's field journal (ISSN 0261-5606; online 1873-0639; founded 1982) for international monetary and financial economics. The center of gravity is exchange rates, capital flows, the global financial cycle, cross-border banking, sovereign debt and risk, currency crises, and monetary-policy spillovers — i.e. open-economy macro-finance with an asset-pricing and identification spine. JIMF rewards a paper that takes a cross-country or high-frequency international design and answers a question a central banker, an IMF/BIS economist, or an international-finance professor would recognize as first-order.

The defining workflow tell: JIMF is an Elsevier journal on Editorial Manager, not a society journal. There is no membership gate, no submission fee for a standard paper (open-access APC only if the author chooses gold OA — 待核实), single-anonymized review is the Elsevier default (待核实 — confirm on the live Guide for Authors), and abstracts run ≤250 words with required Highlights and CRediT author statements. Re-verify volatile specifics (editor names, exact APC, blinding) on the official ScienceDirect/Elsevier pages — access checked 2026-06.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?" on a JIMF-bound paper
• A draft's binding constraint (fit, identification, exhibits, prose, response letter) is unclear
• Work is ping-ponging between data/design, framing, exhibits, and the rebuttal
• The team is comparing JIMF with siblings (JIE, JME, JMCB, JFE) and needs to confirm fit

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
Scope/outlet fit uncertain; might be a JIE/JME/JMCB paper	jimf-topic-selection
Contribution vs. the international-finance frontier is fuzzy	jimf-literature-positioning
The causal or structural credibility is the bottleneck	jimf-identification
Cross-country/high-frequency sample, measurement, or panel design is fragile	jimf-empirical-design
Results may be specification-, sample-, regime-, or inference-sensitive	jimf-robustness
Exhibits are dense or do not answer the question	jimf-tables-figures
Online appendix is too thin or sprawling; data/code deposit unclear	jimf-internet-appendix
Intro/abstract/Highlights miss the JIMF voice	jimf-writing-style
Close to submission; need an Editorial Manager preflight	jimf-submission
Likely referee objections should be pre-empted	jimf-referee-strategy
A decision letter arrived and needs a response plan	jimf-rebuttal

Default order

jimf-topic-selection → jimf-literature-positioning → jimf-identification → jimf-empirical-design → jimf-robustness → jimf-tables-figures → jimf-internet-appendix → jimf-writing-style → jimf-submission → jimf-referee-strategy → jimf-rebuttal

jimf-writing-style is late-stage polish: do not rewrite the intro before identification, the cross-country design, and the robustness layer settle. jimf-internet-appendix runs in parallel with exhibits, not after acceptance — JIMF referees check the appendix.

Routing by paper archetype

JIMF papers cluster into four archetypes; the first bottleneck differs by archetype, so enter the chain at the right link.

Archetype	Likely first bottleneck	Enter at
High-frequency identification (FX / policy-surprise event study, intraday)	event-window construction + surprise measurement	jimf-identification → jimf-empirical-design
Cross-country panel (capital flows, credit, GFCy exposure)	comparability + within-country vs. cross-country variation	jimf-empirical-design → jimf-identification
Policy / institutional natural experiment (capital controls, FXI, regime switch)	a clean control group + endogenous-policy concern	jimf-identification
Open-economy model + estimation (UIP deviations, term premia, sovereign default)	what data feature identifies each parameter	jimf-identification → jimf-robustness

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My event study finds the dollar appreciates after Fed surprises, but a referee says my surprise measure is contaminated by the information channel and my country sample is unbalanced." Two distinct JIMF pushbacks — surprise identification (owned by jimf-identification, separating the pure monetary shock from the central-bank information shock) and panel comparability (owned by jimf-empirical-design, the unbalanced cross-country sample). Route to jimf-identification first; only once the cleaned surprise series is defended do you return to jimf-empirical-design, then jimf-robustness to show the dollar response survives sample and window choices.

Stage gates (advance only when the gate is cleared)

Each handoff has a gate; do not advance a paper past a gate it has not cleared, and route back if a later stage exposes an earlier weakness.

Gate	Cleared when
topic → positioning	the international margin is load-bearing, not decorative
positioning → identification	the contribution is one sentence against a named frontier program
identification → design	the global confounder (GFCy / common US shock) is addressed
design → robustness	measures, country set, and frequency are declared and defended
robustness → exhibits	the result survives dropping the obvious episode and the US
exhibits → appendix	the headline international effect is findable in seconds
appendix → style	the body is self-contained; the deposit traces to every number
style → submission	the abstract (≤250w), Highlights, and JEL land for a policy reader

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:          -> jimf-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:                -> jimf-submission
elif anticipating_objections:        -> jimf-referee-strategy
elif intro_or_abstract_weak:         -> jimf-writing-style
elif appendix_or_deposit_unclear:    -> jimf-internet-appendix
elif exhibits_dense:                 -> jimf-tables-figures
elif result_fragile:                 -> jimf-robustness
elif data_or_measurement_shaky:      -> jimf-empirical-design
elif identification_shaky:           -> jimf-identification
elif contribution_fuzzy:             -> jimf-literature-positioning
else:                                -> jimf-topic-selection

Anti-patterns

• Treating JIMF as interchangeable with Journal of International Economics (real trade + real open-economy macro), JME (domestic monetary/business-cycle), JMCB (domestic money/banking), or JFE (corporate/asset-pricing without the international margin)
• Polishing prose before the design, contribution, and evidence hierarchy are stable
• Letting the online appendix carry a claim the main text must establish
• Quoting volatile process facts (editor, APC, blinding) as permanent rather than marking 检索于 2026-06；以官网为准
• Submitting an applied-finance paper with no international/open-economy margin — JIMF's reason to exist

Output format

【Target】Journal of International Money and Finance (Elsevier)
【Archetype】high-frequency / cross-country panel / policy experiment / open-economy model
【Current bottleneck】fit / contribution / identification / design / robustness / exhibits / appendix / style / submission / revision
【Next skill】<one jimf-* skill>
【Reason】why this is the binding constraint now
【Source check】official facts verified or marked 待核实 / 检索于 2026-06