From jcf-skills
Sharpens the contribution claim of a JCF corporate-finance manuscript for abstract, intro, and cover letter, helping survive the editor's active desk-rejection policy.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/jcf-skills:jcf-contribution-framingThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- Writing the abstract's contribution sentence and the introduction's "we show / we contribute" arc
JCF runs an active desk-rejection policy: the editors state that a non-trivial fraction of papers are rejected without full review. The contribution must be legible in the abstract and first page. A strong JCF contribution typically:
A tight paragraph: the question, the identification, the headline result with a number, and the fit to JCF's corporate-finance remit. Avoid a multi-page defensive letter — the editor is screening fast.
Grade the claim before polishing prose. Editors running an active desk-rejection policy sort contributions fast:
Contribution type | JCF desk survival | What to add before submitting
New mechanism for a known firm decision | Strong | One decisive test separating it from the old mechanism
New quasi-experimental shock, old question | Strong | Show prior designs were confounded, not merely older
New hand-collected governance data | Moderate | A question only this data answers, plus a real design
Larger sample / newer period, same spec | Weak | A reason the answer should differ now — or reframe
Cross-country extension of a US result | Moderate | Institutional variation doing genuine identifying work
Methods demonstration on firm data | Weak | Route to a methods outlet, or find the finance question
If the row reads Weak, repair the contribution before drafting the abstract — wording cannot rescue it at this venue.
Hypothetical setup (all numbers illustrative): a dividend-tax reform raises the tax penalty on dividends relative to repurchases for a subset of firms. Pitch v1: "We study payout policy after the reform and find significant effects." That restates the regression. Apply the rules:
Final sentence: "Exploiting a dividend-tax reform in a difference-in-differences design, we show treated firms substitute repurchases for dividends nearly one-for-one — composition, not total payout, absorbs the tax shock." That clears the one-sentence test: question, design, result, magnitude.
【Contribution】<one sentence: question + design + result>
【Novelty】<vs. 2–3 closest> 【So what】<audience + payoff>
【Over-claim risk】[low/med/high] + fix
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin jcf-skillsFrames contribution claims for Journal of Banking & Finance papers to articulate why results matter for banking, financial intermediation, markets, regulation, or corporate finance.
Frames the marginal contribution of a Review of Finance manuscript into a defensible claim that top-three-standard referees will accept.
Positions a Journal of Finance manuscript by writing a crisp contribution paragraph that names the closest papers and states the specific delta. Use when the related-work section is a chronological list or the intro fails to state what is new.