Stress-tests causal identification strategies in Economic Policy manuscripts against a dual academic/policy discussant bar.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/economic-policy-skills:ecopol-identificationThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- A policy effect rests on OLS + controls, or TWFE on staggered policy rollout
EP papers are debated by two named discussants and read by policymakers, so identification must be both rigorous and legible. The academic discussant will apply the modern frontier; the policy discussant must be able to follow why the estimate is causal without reading the appendix. The discipline: make the mapping from data/variation to the policy claim explicit in the main text in plain language, and carry the formal defense in a technical appendix (EP's house split — accessible main text, rigorous appendix). Because results feed a policy recommendation, the magnitude — not just the sign or the stars — must be defended; report standard errors and confidence intervals, never lean on significance asterisks for the headline claim.
For each design, write the one-sentence plain-language version that goes in the main text: e.g. "Because the reform applied only to firms just above a 50-employee threshold, firms just below serve as a control group — so the difference in their hiring is the reform's effect." The appendix carries the formal estimand and assumptions.
【Journal】Economic Policy (EP)
【Skill】ecopol-identification
【Branch】empirical causal / structural-quantitative
【Plain-language identification】one sentence for the policy reader
【Frontier diagnostics】[event-study + Bacon / first-stage + AR / density + bandwidth / moments + invariance]
【Inference】SE/CI + clustering level (no asterisk-driven headline)
【What it does NOT identify】[...]
【Next skill】ecopol-theory-model
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin economic-policy-skillsStress-tests quasi-experimental policy-evaluation designs (DID/event study, IV, RDD/bunching, RCT) for AEJ: Economic Policy manuscripts.
Stress-tests causal identification strategies for JPE manuscripts: DID, IV, RDD, event studies, and structural estimation. Flags design flaws like staggered TWFE or weak IV before drafting tables.
Stress-tests causal identification strategies for JPubE manuscripts against public-finance norms before drafting tables.