brycewang-stanford/aer-topic-selection

AER Topic Selection

Overview

The single most expensive mistake in top-5 economics is writing a polished manuscript around a contribution that was always going to be desk-rejected. This skill is the pre-mortem: stress-test the idea, the audience, and the venue before the introduction is drafted.

The AER acceptance rate is 6–8% of submitted papers and the desk rejection rate at the AER family runs 45–62% depending on the journal. Roughly half of the survival probability is determined before the first paragraph is written.

When to Use

• A new project just started and the contribution sentence cannot be written in one line
• The user is undecided between submitting to AER, AER: Insights, or an AEJ
• A prior submission was desk-rejected and the user wants to diagnose whether the topic itself was the problem
• The paper "feels solid" but no senior colleague has agreed to send it to AER

The Top-5 Bar

A paper clears the top-5 bar if and only if all four are true:

1. Cross-subfield interest. A labor economist's paper must matter to public, macro, IO, and development economists. Not the median person — the editor. If you cannot name three subfields that would cite it, it is an AEJ paper.
2. Substantive contribution. Methodological extension or substantive new fact or new identification or genuinely new data. Competent application of an existing toolkit is desk-rejected.
3. Self-contained in the first 3 pages. The editor decides in ten minutes. If understanding the contribution requires the appendix, the paper fails.
4. Defensible identification or model discipline. Empirical: design-based, not selection-on-observables. Theory: tractable result with an empirical or policy hook.

If any single test fails, the realistic target is an AEJ or a top field journal, not AER.

Venue Routing

| Signal | Target | |-------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------| | Cross-subfield interest + ≥ 40 pages of substance | AER | | One sharp result, fits the AER: Insights word/exhibit formula, can be told without a long lit review | AER: Insights | | Strong but subfield-bounded contribution; methodologically sound | AEJ: Applied / Policy / Macro / Micro | | Conventional method, modest extension, useful for one literature | Top field journal | | Field experiment with policy hook | AER, AEJ:Applied, or QJE — register in AEA RCT Registry before submission |

For AER: Insights specifically, the editor (Amy Finkelstein) has stated that a great short paper "makes one point and makes it clearly, concisely, and effectively." If you have a second point, write a second paper.

The Contribution Sentence Test

Force the contribution into one sentence with this template:

We show that X causes Y, identified by Z, using data D, with magnitude M,
which changes the way economists think about Q.

If any blank cannot be filled in:

• X / Y unclear → the research question is not yet a question
• Z weak → return to aer-identification before doing anything else
• D thin → small-sample, unreplicable, or off-the-shelf data is desk-reject bait
• M unknown → results don't exist yet; this is not a topic-selection problem
• Q absent → this is an AEJ paper, not an AER paper

Novelty Audit

Run these five questions:

1. Has someone in NBER, IZA, CEPR, or SSRN already done this? (Search before writing.)
2. Is the closest published paper in a top-5 within the last 5 years? If yes, what does yours add — new method, new setting, new mechanism, opposite sign?
3. Does the result change a policy debate, flip a stylized fact, or unify two strands of literature?
4. Could a senior referee compress your contribution into "well, we already knew that"?
5. Could a senior referee compress your contribution into "interesting but it's not economics"?

A "yes" to (4) or (5) is fatal at AER.

Desk Rejection Red Flags

The editor scans for these in the first ten minutes:

• Correlational language masquerading as causal ("our results suggest a relationship between ...")
• An introduction that runs more than 3 pages without naming the data or the identification strategy
• A 14-column table 1 with no headline takeaway
• Spelling, formatting, or LaTeX-bibliography errors visible on the first page
• Abstract over 100 words
• Excessive reliance on the online appendix ("see appendix B for the main result")
• Methodology mismatch — claims causal identification but reports OLS with controls

If any of these are present, fix them before submission.

Pre-Submission Seminar Sequence

Peer feedback measurably improves journal placement: one SD more comments → 47% higher journal quality. Before sending to AER, target:

1. Internal brown-bag — 2 rounds, separated by ≥ 6 weeks
2. ≥ 2 external seminars at peer or top-tier departments
3. ≥ 1 NBER / CEPR / IZA conference presentation
4. Working paper posted ≥ 3 months before submission

Skip none of these for an AER target. AER: Insights tolerates a shorter cycle because the contribution is sharper and the venue is younger.

Handoff

When this skill finishes, emit:

CONTRIBUTION SENTENCE: <one line>
TARGET VENUE: <AER | AER:Insights | AEJ:Applied | AEJ:Policy | AEJ:Macro | AEJ:Micro>
TOP-5 BAR TESTS PASSED: <count>/4
KILL SWITCHES TRIGGERED: <list, or "none">
NEXT SKILL: <aer-identification | aer-introduction>

Anti-Patterns

• Choosing the venue based on prestige rather than fit. An AEJ acceptance beats two AER rejections.
• Letting the contribution sentence include "and we also explore ..." — that and is where the paper dies.
• Submitting to AER because "the bar is the same as AEJ anyway." It is not. Cross-subfield interest is the explicit filter.