From aej-economic-policy-skills
Builds a transparent welfare, cost-benefit, or optimal-policy framework from reduced-form causal estimates for AEJ: Economic Policy manuscripts.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/aej-economic-policy-skills:aejpol-theory-modelThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- You have a credible causal estimate but no framework to say what it means for welfare or policy
At AEJ: Policy theory is usually in service of the policy reading, not the headline. Most papers do not need a full structural model; they need a transparent framework that turns a reduced-form estimate into a welfare, cost-benefit, or distributional object a policymaker can use. Pick the lightest framework that delivers the policy statement and make its assumptions explicit.
Whatever the path, ask who gains and who pays. An incidence split across income, region, or demographic groups is often the AEJ: Policy contribution and is cheap to add once the estimate exists.
A clean RDD shows a benefit-eligibility threshold raises take-up and reduces hardship. Alone it is "the program helps." Bridged: the take-up and hardship estimates are the sufficient statistics for an MVPF — recipients value the transfer at, say, $1.20 per $1 of net government cost after behavioral offsets (illustrative) — and the incidence falls mostly on the lowest-income tercile. Now the paper states whether the program is a good use of public funds and for whom.
【Policy object】MVPF / net cost-per-outcome / optimum / incidence
【Framework】sufficient statistics / cost-benefit ledger / optimal-policy / small model
【Sufficient statistic(s)】which estimates feed the welfare expression
【Key assumptions + failure modes】[...]
【Uncertainty】how the estimate's SE propagates to the welfare number
【Distributional reading】who gains / who pays
【Next step】aejpol-robustness then aejpol-writing-style
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin aej-economic-policy-skillsBuilds or tightens conceptual frames or quantitative models for Economic Policy manuscripts. Keeps models minimal, honest, and legible to policy audiences.
Translates causal estimates into clear, calibrated policy takeaways for AEJ: Economic Policy manuscripts, focusing on abstract and introduction prose.
Calibrates the role of theory in empirical-first economics papers, helping structure models that interpret estimates without dominating the empirical design.