jep-topic-selection

Topic Selection for JEP (jep-topic-selection)

When to trigger

• You have an idea and are unsure it belongs in JEP versus a research journal or JEL
• A topic feels important to you but you cannot say why a non-specialist economist should care
• The "article" is really a single new result looking for a home
• You want to gauge whether a cluster of topics could anchor a symposium

The JEP fit bar

JEP publishes accessible synthesis for a broad audience of economists, readable by 90 percent or more of the AEA membership (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). A JEP topic is judged on four axes — a topic must clear all four, not just one.

Axis	Pass	Fail
Breadth of interest	A labor, macro, or finance economist who does not work on this would still want to read it	Only specialists in one subfield care
Timeliness / "why now"	A live debate, a maturing literature, a policy moment, or a method whose lessons have spread	A topic equally publishable five years ago or five years hence with no hook
Synthesizability	There is a body of work to distill into a through-line and a few takeaways	A single new finding with nothing yet to synthesize
Accessibility ceiling	The core ideas survive translation into plain language	The contribution is the technical machinery and dies without it

JEP is a synthesis venue, not a discovery venue. If the value is "here is my new estimate," that is a research-journal paper. If the value is "here is what we now collectively understand, and what we don't," that is JEP.

Sibling and neighbor disambiguation

• vs. AER / AEJ / field journals (primary research): those reward a new identified result. JEP rewards understanding distilled for non-specialists. A JEP article may mention the author's own work but is not built to establish a new finding.
• vs. Journal of Economic Literature (JEL): JEL is the technical survey of record — long, comprehensive, equations and full method coverage for specialists. JEP is shorter, non-technical, broad-audience. If your draft needs the full apparatus and exhaustive coverage, it is JEL-shaped; if it needs a clear story and selective evidence, it is JEP-shaped.
• vs. op-ed / popular writing: JEP is rigorous synthesis by economists for economists — more careful, more balanced, and more cited than a popular piece, even though it is accessible.

Symposium lens

JEP often groups articles into symposia on a theme. Ask: could this topic be one panel of a conversation (e.g., three to five complementary angles on a single question)? If yes, note the companion angles — that framing strengthens both a single-article pitch and a symposium proposal (hand to jep-proposal-and-symposium).

Checklist

• Stated in one sentence why a non-specialist economist should care
• Named the "why now" (debate / literature maturity / policy moment / method diffusion)
• Confirmed there is a body of work to synthesize, not a single result
• Confirmed the core ideas survive translation to plain language
• Decided JEP vs. JEL vs. research journal explicitly, with the reason
• Considered whether the topic anchors or joins a symposium

Worked vignette (illustrative)

An author has three recent papers estimating how remote work affects city wage gradients. As a research output that's a JPE/AEJ paper. As a JEP topic the question becomes broader: "What has a decade of evidence taught us about how remote work is reshaping where people live and what they earn — and what remains uncertain?" That clears all four axes: a generalist cares (it touches housing, labor, and cities), it is timely, there is now a body of work to synthesize (not one result), and the core lessons survive plain language. The author's own three papers become part of the evidence, not the point of the article.

Anti-patterns

• Pitching "a summary of my own recent papers" with no broader synthesis or lesson
• A narrow methods or measurement contribution dressed up as a perspective
• A topic only specialists care about ("interesting to my subfield" is not the bar)
• A timeless survey with no "why now" — reads as a textbook chapter, not JEP
• Choosing JEP because the research journals rejected the result (wrong reason; wrong venue)

Output format

【Topic】one sentence
【Why a non-specialist cares】[...]
【Why now】[debate / literature maturity / policy moment / method diffusion]
【Synthesizable?】body-of-work to distill: [Y/N + what]
【Survives translation?】core ideas in plain language: [Y/N]
【Venue call】JEP / JEL / research journal — because [...]
【Symposium angle】standalone / could anchor or join a symposium on [...]
【Next step】jep-proposal-and-symposium