From aej-applied-economics-skills
Positions the marginal contribution of an AEJ: Applied manuscript precisely against prior applied-micro work. Use when a contribution is fuzzy, undersold, or risks reading as a replication.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/aej-applied-economics-skills:aeja-literature-positioningThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- A referee or co-author asks "what is new here relative to [closely related paper]?"
At AEJ: Applied the contribution is judged as: a credibly identified answer to a question the applied-micro community has not yet settled, positioned against the closest prior work — not the whole field. Editors and referees reward a contribution that is specific, honest, and load-bearing. Name your contribution type, then position only against the papers that threaten it.
| Contribution type | What "new" must mean | Positioning move |
|---|---|---|
| New answer | a magnitude prior work did not credibly estimate | show why prior designs failed to identify it |
| New design / source of variation | a cleaner identification of a known question | contrast your design's assumptions vs. the standard one |
| New setting / population | external validity that changes the lesson | argue why this setting is informative, not just available |
| New mechanism | decomposing a known effect into channels | show the prior literature left the channel ambiguous |
| New measurement | a quantity nobody could measure before | establish the measure's validity, not just its novelty |
A draft claims to be "the first study of cash transfers and schooling in [country]." A referee replies that three RCTs already estimate this effect elsewhere, so geography is not a contribution. The AEJ: Applied fix is to reposition by identification and mechanism: the closest papers estimate the effect where transfers are conditional, leaving open the unconditional case; this paper exploits an unconditional rollout and shows the schooling response is half as large (illustrative), isolating the conditionality channel. The contribution becomes a mechanism the closest authors would agree they did not pin down — not a new map pin.
【Contribution type】answer / design / setting / mechanism / measurement
【Three closest papers】1) ___ (open: ___) 2) ___ (open: ___) 3) ___ (open: ___)
【Honest delta】one sentence the closest author would accept
【Positioned by】identification reason prior work left it open: ___
【Sibling check】settled by AER/AEJ:Policy/field that we do NOT re-claim: ___
【Next step】aeja-identification (or aeja-writing-style if design is settled)
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin aej-applied-economics-skillsPositions a JEEA manuscript's contribution relative to the frontier when claims are fuzzy, oversold, or undersold. Stakes marginal contribution for a general-interest readership.
Positions a REStud manuscript against the closest related work by confronting nearest papers and stating the marginal contribution precisely.
Helps position an AEJ: Microeconomics theory manuscript by identifying the closest existing result and stating the theorem-relative delta (weaker assumption, new environment, full characterization, impossibility, or new mechanism).