geb-literature-positioning

Literature Positioning (geb-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• The relation to prior game-theory results is vague ("related to a large literature")
• You cannot name the two or three papers you most directly generalize or beat
• A reviewer might say "this is already known" or "this is just a special case of X"
• The paper reads as a survey with a result attached, instead of a result with placement

The GEB positioning bar

GEB is a specialist journal, so its referees and Advisory Editors are game-theory experts who know the canonical results cold. Positioning here is sharper than at a general-economics journal: you are not explaining game theory to outsiders, you are convincing insiders that your theorem, mechanism, or experiment is not implied by what they already know. Because the chief editor routes your paper to an anonymous Advisory Editor (one of ~45) who selects referees, the people judging novelty are likely to include authors of the nearest prior work — position honestly and precisely.

GEB also spans economics, political science, biology, computer science, mathematics, and psychology, so the "nearest neighbor" to your result may live in a CS/EC or biology literature, not only in economics. Search across those fields; a result already known in algorithmic game theory or evolutionary biology is not novel just because it is new to economics.

How to stake the contribution

• Name the frontier. Cite the specific prior theorem / mechanism / experiment your work advances, not a vague cluster.
• State the delta in one sentence. "Relative to [X], we drop assumption A / weaken B / cover a new class / get a tight bound where [X] gave a loose one."
• Pre-empt the special-case objection. Show explicitly what your result gives that the nearest result does not — ideally a corollary recovering theirs as a limit.
• Distinguish a prior conference version. If your own earlier conference paper (EC, WINE, SAGT, etc.) exists, say what is new here; GEB requires this disclosure and referees will know the conference work.
• Credit across fields. If the idea echoes a CS/biology/political-science result, cite it and explain the added game-theoretic value.

Anti-patterns

• A literature "wall" of citations with no stated delta against any single paper
• Ignoring near-identical CS/EC or evolutionary-game results because they are outside economics
• Claiming novelty that a reader can refute with one well-known theorem
• Burying the contribution sentence on page 6
• Hiding overlap with your own prior conference paper

Positioning pass for Games and Economic Behavior

Use this as a second-pass capability check. First lock the primitives, equilibrium concept, comparative statics, and proof or experiment boundary; then test whether the manuscript addresses game theorists who ask what the model teaches beyond a clever example.

• Primary move: Map incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, this manuscript's delta, and the sibling-venue omission a referee might notice.
• Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
• Neighbor test: compare against JET for theory abstraction, Theoretical Economics for compact theory contribution, Experimental Economics for experiment-first designs; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
• Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.

Output format

【Nearest prior work】[2-3 specific papers / theorems / mechanisms]
【Delta sentence】"relative to X, we ..."
【Special-case defense】recovers X as a limit / corollary? [Y/N]
【Cross-field check】CS-EC / biology / poli-sci neighbors cited? [Y/N]
【Conference-version overlap】disclosed + differentiated? [Y/N / NA]
【Next step】geb-contribution-framing