Aer Topic Selection

---
name: aer-topic-selection
description: Use when evaluating whether a research idea clears the AER top-5 bar, when routing between AER, AER:Insights, and the AEJ family, or when sharpening a fuzzy contribution sentence into one publishable claim. Apply before any writing begins.
---

# 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.

AER accepts only a small share of submissions — on the order of **6–8%** historically (Card and DellaVigna 2013, *Nine Facts about Top Journals*), and recent *Reports of the Editor* put the rate lower still. A large fraction of submissions are desk-rejected before ever reaching a referee; for *AER: Insights*, founding editor Amy Finkelstein has reported desk-rejecting "roughly 45%" of submissions. Either way, much of a paper's 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 (the search protocol and antecedents map live in
`aer-literature` — use it to answer them with evidence, not recall):

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.

## Repository Resources

When working from the AER-skills repository or plugin bundle, load only the
relevant resource:

- Recent AER/AEJ exemplars by subfield: `examples/modern-aer-exemplars.md`
- Classic contribution archetypes: `examples/aer-exemplars.md`
- Desk-rejection no-go audit: `docs/desk-rejection-audit.md`
- Workflow routing after the topic decision: `docs/workflow-map.md`

## Go / No-Go Gate

Advance to `aer-identification` / `aer-introduction` only if **all** hold; otherwise route down (AEJ / field journal) or stop:

- [ ] Contribution sentence written in one line with every blank (X, Y, Z, D, M, Q) filled
- [ ] All four Top-5 Bar tests evaluated; AER chosen as target only if all four pass
- [ ] Target venue named explicitly, with a one-sentence reason it is not one tier lower
- [ ] No kill switch live — no "and we also explore", no "we already knew that", no "interesting but not economics"
- [ ] At least three subfields that would plausibly cite the paper can be named

## Handoff

When this skill finishes, emit:

```text
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-literature | aer-identification>
```

## 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.