Rof Rebuttal

---
name: rof-rebuttal
description: "Use when drafting a Review of Finance response letter and revision plan after an R&R, especially under the two-round philosophy, top-three-finance standards, code/data conditions, and page-cap constraints."
category: business-and-finance
source_repo: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
source_path: "Review-of-Finance-Skills/skills/rof-rebuttal/SKILL.md"
source_url: https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills/blob/HEAD/Review-of-Finance-Skills/skills/rof-rebuttal/SKILL.md
---


# Review of Finance Rebuttal

Use this after an RoF decision letter. Because RoF aims to reach a final decision by the
second round, the first revision is your one real chance — make the round-one response
decisive rather than holding arguments back.

## When to trigger

- An RoF R&R or first-round decision with referee reports has arrived.
- You need to sequence revisions and draft a point-by-point response.
- A second-round report raises a new concern and you must decide how to handle it.

## Response strategy

- Separate the referees' major concerns required for publication from their suggestions,
  mirroring the two-bucket structure RoF asks referees to use; resolve every major concern
  fully before polishing suggestions.
- Answer the finance contribution first, then identification, theory, data, robustness, and
  exposition.
- Show, don't assert: point each response to the exact revised table, figure, section, and
  page; quote short new text.
- Keep the revised manuscript within the hard 60-page total cap (appendices, bibliography,
  figures, tables all count).
- If a new referee concern appears in round two, check whether it was raised in round one and
  whether it is tied to your changes; under RoF's two-round philosophy a genuinely new,
  unrelated concern may fall outside scope — raise this politely, via the editor, and rarely.
- Authors own the paper: you may decline a suggestion that would harm it, with reasons.
- Update replication programs, pseudo-data, logs, and the Data Availability Statement
  alongside manuscript revisions.

## Point-by-point skeleton

```text
Referee 1, Major Concern 1 (identification):
  Restate: <one-sentence neutral paraphrase>
  Action:  <new Table 4 cols 3-5; revised Section 5.2, pp. 18-20>
  Result:  <coefficient now X (s.e. Y); conclusion unchanged or sharpened>
  Text:    "<at most two quoted sentences of new manuscript text>"
Referee 1, Suggestion 1: adopted / adapted because ... / declined because ...
Editor letter (1 page): each major concern -> its fix; page-cap accounting
  (what moved to the internet appendix); code, pseudo-data, and DAS updates
  shipped with this revision.
```

## Triage table for common RoF report lines

| The report says | Likely intent | Round-one response |
|---|---|---|
| "Identification is not convincing" (major) | spine doubt | new design evidence — pre-trends, placebo, alternative estimator — not prose |
| "The magnitude seems implausible" | calibration doubt | benchmark against two published estimates; reconcile or correct |
| "Please also examine X, Y, and Z" (suggestion) | breadth wish | run the cheap ones into the internet appendix; decline scope creep with reasons |
| "The authors should cite [their papers]" | citation nudge | cite when genuinely relevant given RoF's author-responsibility norm; otherwise draw the boundary politely |
| "The European sample limits generality" | external validity | add the US or cross-region contrast, or argue why the institution isolates a universal force |

## Worked example — page-cap arithmetic in the revision

Illustrative. The R&R asks for three robustness exercises and a heterogeneity split. Four
new tables at roughly 0.8 pages each plus notes cost about 3.5 pages against the hard
60-page ceiling. The plan: one new body table answering the bucket-1 concern; three
exhibits to the internet appendix with one-line pointers; 1.5 pages of introduction
trimmed — net +0.3 pages. State this accounting in the editor letter so the cap is
visibly respected without burying the new evidence.

## Resubmission hygiene

- Refresh the double-blind scrub: new acknowledgements, conference thanks, or repository
  links added during revision are classic anonymity leaks at this journal.
- If results changed materially, regenerate logs and the pseudo-dataset so the package
  matches the revised exhibits — a stale packet undermines the response letter.
- Verify current resubmission mechanics and any fees on Editorial Express and the
  journal's current author guidelines before uploading.

## Anti-patterns

- Treating suggestions as binding while under-addressing a major concern.
- Drafting the letter before the revised manuscript exists.
- Saving a key result or argument for round two — it may simply be ignored.
- Defensive, adjective-heavy pushback instead of new evidence.

## Output format

```text
[Decision] R&R / reject-resubmit / conditional acceptance / other
[Revision thesis] <one sentence>
[Required concerns] <issue -> manuscript change>
[Suggestions] <accept, partially address, or explain>
[Code/data updates] <needed or complete>
```

---

**Source:** [`brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills`](https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) → `Review-of-Finance-Skills/skills/rof-rebuttal/SKILL.md`