geb-contribution-framing

Contribution Framing (geb-contribution-framing)

When to trigger

• The introduction lists what you did but never states what is new for game theory
• A reader finishes the intro unsure whether to be impressed
• The contribution is buried under setup, notation, or related work
• You are about to write the cover letter and need a crisp claim

Why framing decides the desk screen

At GEB the chief editor routes each paper to one of seven Editors as the Editor in Charge, who can desk-reject before any referee sees it — about one-third of submissions are desk-rejected. That Editor is a game theorist reading many papers; the advance must be unmistakable in the abstract and first page. With only ~15% of submissions ultimately published, a paper whose contribution is implicit competes poorly against one that states it plainly. Framing is not spin — it is making a real advance legible fast.

The GEB contribution sentence

Write one sentence of the form:

"We show that [class of games / setting] admits [result], which [generalizes / overturns / characterizes / mechanizes] [prior understanding], implying [consequence for theory or applications]."

Then test it:

• Is it about game theory? The payoff must be to the theory or its methods, not only to an application domain.
• Is it falsifiable-sized? A specific theorem/mechanism/finding, not "we study X."
• Does it name the advance verb? Generalize, weaken an assumption, characterize, prove impossibility, identify a behavioral mechanism, etc.
• Would a non-specialist game theorist care? GEB's audience spans sub-fields and adjacent disciplines.

Structure the claim cascade

1. Headline claim — the one sentence above, early in the intro.
2. Why it was open — the obstacle that left this unresolved.
3. The key idea — the one move (construction, technique, design, experiment) that cracks it.
4. Scope of the advance — how general; what it does and does not cover.
5. Implications — for theory, for mechanism design, or for applications (CS/EC, biology, behavior).

Anti-patterns

• "We study a model of ..." with no claimed result in the intro
• A contribution that is really an application contribution dressed as theory
• Three competing "main" contributions with no ranking
• Overstating generality the proofs do not support (referees will check)
• Saving the contribution sentence for the conclusion

Contribution pass for Games and Economic Behavior

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the primitives, equilibrium concept, comparative statics, and proof or experiment boundary; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: game theorists who ask what the model teaches beyond a clever example.

• Do the pass: Translate the result into who learns what, which mechanism changes, and which alternative explanation is ruled out; keep the contribution narrower than the evidence.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against JET for theory abstraction, Theoretical Economics for compact theory contribution, Experimental Economics for experiment-first designs; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Contribution sentence】"We show that ... which ... implying ..."
【Advance verb】generalize / characterize / impossibility / mechanism / behavioral-ID
【Game-theory payoff】explicit? [Y/N]
【Claim cascade】headline / why-open / key idea / scope / implications present? [Y/N each]
【Over-claim flags】[...]
【Next step】geb-identification-strategy