Jde Topic Selection

---
name: jde-topic-selection
description: Use when judging whether a research question fits the Journal of Development Economics (JDE) — a first-order question about low- and middle-income economies and the process of economic development. Tests topic fit before identification or drafting begins.
---

# Topic Selection (jde-topic-selection)

## When to trigger

- You have data or a setting but are unsure it is a *development* question
- The question is interesting but the developing-country stakes are unclear
- You are weighing whether the work fits JDE versus a general-interest or a regional journal
- You are deciding whether to run the project as a prospective, pre-results-reviewed design

## The JDE fit bar

JDE is the **leading field journal in development economics**, published by Elsevier. It publishes theoretical and empirical research on the **economics of developing countries and the process of economic development** — poverty, growth, institutions, trade and development, health, education, labor, agriculture, credit and finance, and the microeconomics and macroeconomics of low- and middle-income economies. A question fits when:

- The **economic agent or economy is developing** (a household, firm, market, or government in an LMIC), and the mechanism is genuinely about development, not a generic micro result that happens to use developing-country data.
- It is **first-order**: it speaks to welfare, growth, or policy for poor populations, not a marginal refinement of a within-subfield debate.
- It travels: a smart development economist outside your exact subfield should care about the *answer*.

Because JDE is highly selective — roughly **1,300 submissions a year**, only about a quarter sent for review, ~**6-8%** accepted — a marginal or purely descriptive question rarely survives. The question, not the technique, has to carry the paper.

## Decision shortcuts

- "It's a clean micro result but the setting is incidental" → likely off-fit; sharpen the development mechanism or retarget.
- "It's a field experiment with a clear policy lesson for poor households" → strong fit; consider the **pre-results review** track so the design is locked before results.
- "It's a short, single-result paper" → consider the **AER: Insights-style short-paper** track.
- "It's a theory paper on development dynamics" → fits; JDE publishes theory, not only RCTs.

## Anti-patterns

- A general labor/IO/macro paper wearing a developing-country dataset as a costume
- A descriptive correlation with no welfare or policy stake for poor populations
- Over-claiming external validity from one site without saying what the result teaches development broadly
- Treating JDE as a fallback for a paper that failed a top-5 desk — fit must be genuine

## Output format

```
【Development question】one sentence
【Why it is first-order for LMICs】...
【Travels beyond the subfield?】[Y/N + why]
【Suggested route】full-length / short-paper / pre-results review
【Next step】jde-literature-positioning
```