From aej-applied-economics-skills
Anticipates objections from AEJ: Applied referees to pre-empt them in a manuscript before submission or revision.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/aej-applied-economics-skills:aeja-referee-strategyThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- The paper is near submission and you want to stress-test it against the referees it will draw
AEJ: Applied uses single-blind review through the AEA ScholarOne system: author identities are visible to referees, while referee identities remain anonymous to authors. An editor assigns the paper to a coeditor or handles it directly, and before a first R&R the handling coeditor consults a second coeditor. Referees here are identification-literate applied microeconomists; the modal report attacks the credibility of the design first, then magnitude/mechanism, then external validity. The editor weighs whether the contribution is novel and the design clears the bar. Plan to pre-empt the predictable objections in the paper itself, leaving the response letter for genuinely new asks.
| Referee objection (by design) | Pre-emption to build in now |
|---|---|
| "TWFE is biased under staggered timing" | heterogeneity-robust estimator + Bacon decomposition already in the paper |
| "Parallel trends is not credible" | clean pre-trend leads + honest-DID sensitivity bound |
| "Instrument is not excludable" | institutional + theoretical exclusion argument + falsification tests |
| "RD jump is manipulation / bandwidth-driven" | density test + bandwidth sensitivity + donut |
| "Effect is just selection / confounding" | Oster δ / coefficient-stability bounds |
| "Local/ITT effect ≠ the policy-relevant effect" | explicit estimand + calibrated external-validity discussion |
| "Inference too narrow (few clusters)" | wild-cluster bootstrap / randomization inference |
| "Mechanism is a black box" | a test that distinguishes the proposed channel from rivals |
| "Not reproducible" | the openICPSR package built and referenced (aeja-replication-package) |
The shared, venue-neutral objection catalog is in
../../resources/README.md(links to the empirical-methods hub) — walk it before drafting.
【Front matter】single-blind title/byline and disclosures ready? [Y/N]
【Objection map】per assumption: [objection → pre-emption in paper]
【Biggest weakness】addressed in text? [Y/N] — how: ___
【Robustness placement】main vs appendix split: ___
【External validity】estimand + scope stated? [Y/N]
【Reproducibility visible】package referenced? [Y/N]
【Next step】aeja-submission
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin aej-applied-economics-skillsAnticipates REStat referee objections for empirical economics designs and maps threats to pre-emptive defenses, helping you stress-test manuscripts before submission.
Anticipates referee and coeditor objections on AEJ: Macro manuscripts before submission, calibrates desk-reject and revision odds, and identifies pre-emptive robustness checks.
Anticipates and pre-empts referee objections for Economic Journal manuscripts. Focuses on broad interest, identification, and mechanism concerns.