Qje Literature Positioning

---
name: qje-literature-positioning
description: Use when staking a Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) manuscript's contribution against the frontier — what it builds on, what it overturns, and why it belongs in a general-interest journal. Positions the contribution; it does not write the full literature survey.
---

# Literature Positioning (qje-literature-positioning)

## When to trigger

- The contribution-relative-to-literature is fuzzy or buried
- The intro lists references but never says what is *new*
- A coauthor or reader asks "how is this different from [recent paper]?"
- You are unsure which literatures the paper should speak to

## QJE positioning principle: contribution, not catalog

QJE intros do **not** open with a freestanding "literature review" section. The contribution is woven into the **introduction**: the big question, the setting, the design, the headline result, and then a tight paragraph (or two) placing the paper in the literature, in **author-date (Chicago)** style. The job is to make one of QJE's five Harvard-based Editors see, in the first two pages, that the answer is new and important — because they desk-decide in ~2 weeks and desk-reject the majority. A survey-style "Section 2: Literature Review" is a field-journal habit and reads as off-template here. The model is how QJE landmark papers position: Mankiw, Romer & Weil (QJE 1992) staked their claim directly against Solow-model skeptics; Chetty–Hendren–Kline–Saez (QJE 2014) positioned against the whole intergenerational-mobility literature in a few paragraphs.

## The four positioning moves

1. **Anchor to a big literature.** Name the broad question your paper advances (e.g., intergenerational mobility; the long-run effects of institutions; the welfare effects of a policy). Speak to a literature a general-interest reader recognizes.
2. **Name the frontier.** Cite the 3–6 most relevant recent papers precisely. QJE referees are often the authors of those papers; misciting or ignoring the frontier is fatal under double-blind review where you cannot know who is reading.
3. **State the delta.** In one or two sentences: what does this paper do that the frontier did not? New variation? New data? A previously untestable mechanism? A reconciliation of conflicting findings?
4. **Bound the claim.** Say what the paper does *not* establish. Calibrated humility reads as strength and pre-empts the "they over-claim" report.

## Positioning patterns

| Pattern                          | One-line frame                                                        |
|----------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| New variation, old question      | "Prior work could not isolate X; our [natural experiment] does."       |
| New data, settled-seeming debate | "Using [novel data] we revisit [debate] and find ..."                  |
| Mechanism made testable          | "The literature posited X; we provide the first direct test."          |
| Reconciliation                   | "Findings A and B conflict; we show both hold under [condition]."       |
| Magnitude that matters           | "Estimates existed but were imprecise/biased; ours is clean and large." |

## Checklist

- [ ] Contribution stated in the introduction, not in a separate survey section
- [ ] The 3–6 frontier papers are cited precisely and characterized fairly
- [ ] The delta (what is new) is stated in one or two crisp sentences
- [ ] The paper speaks to a literature a general-interest reader recognizes
- [ ] Likely-referee papers are cited and engaged, not ignored
- [ ] Claims are explicitly bounded (what the paper does not show)
- [ ] Author-date (Chicago) citation style throughout (QJE house format)

## Anti-patterns

- A standalone "Literature Review" section that catalogs without positioning
- "To the best of our knowledge, we are the first ..." with no engagement of close work
- Ignoring or under-citing the very people likely to referee the paper
- Positioning only within a narrow subfield (fails the general-interest test)
- Claiming a delta the design cannot deliver (over-claiming the contribution)

## Output format

```
【Big literature】the broad question this paper advances
【Frontier】[3–6 closest recent papers]
【Delta】what this paper does that the frontier did not
【Bound】what the paper does NOT establish
【Positioning pattern】new-variation / new-data / mechanism / reconciliation / magnitude
【Next step】qje-identification
```