jie-literature-positioning

Literature Positioning (jie-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• The contribution is not yet stated sharply against the existing international-economics literature
• A reviewer might say "this is already known" or "wrong comparison set"
• You are writing a literature section that reads like a survey instead of a claim

How to position at JIE

JIE is a field journal, so positioning happens within international economics, against the right sub-literature — not against all of economics. Pin the paper to its frontier and state, in one or two sentences, what you add. Choose the comparison set deliberately:

• Trade: gravity and structural gravity (Anderson–van Wincoop, Head–Mayer; PPML à la Santos Silva–Tenreyro), Eaton–Kortum / Melitz quantitative trade, commercial-policy and trade-agreement work (Staiger and co-authors), the China-shock / shift-share exposure literature, GVCs and trade in value added, spatial/economic-geography.
• International macro/finance: open-economy macro and the small-open-economy/RBC-NK tradition (Uribe and co-authors), exchange-rate disconnect and pass-through (Engel and co-authors), sovereign default (Eaton–Gersovitz, Arellano), capital flows and the global financial cycle, international pricing and currency of invoicing.

State the contribution as a delta: "Relative to [frontier paper(s)], we [new data / new mechanism / new identification], which changes [quantitative or qualitative conclusion]." Cite the editors' and the field's anchor papers where genuinely relevant — but do not pad.

What referees check

• Are the closest two or three papers cited and correctly distinguished?
• Is the claimed gap real, or already filled in a paper you missed?
• Does the positioning match your scope half (trade vs macro-finance)?
• Is the contribution original in motivation or modelling structure, per JIE's gate, and is that originality legible here?

Anti-patterns

• A chronological survey instead of a staked claim
• Positioning a trade paper only against macro work, or vice versa
• Comparing to a broad genre ("the gravity literature") instead of the closest papers
• Over-claiming a gap that a recent JIE/AER/JIE-adjacent paper already closed
• Ignoring the handling-editor's own frontier when it is the obvious comparison

Worked delta example (illustrative)

A firm-level tariff-war paper positions on the trade side. The closest frontier is the China-shock / shift-share exposure literature and the structural-gravity tradition. A weak positioning says "we contribute to the trade-policy literature." A JIE-grade delta names the closest two or three papers and states the gap precisely: "Relative to aggregate-exposure studies of the tariff war, we use firm-level customs records to show the export response is concentrated in [a margin those papers cannot see], which revises the implied trade elasticity downward." That sentence is legible to a trade referee, defends a real gap rather than a genre, and ties the novelty to the originality axis (new data / new fact). Check that no recent JIE or AER paper already closed it before staking the claim.

Positioning pass for Journal of International Economics

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the cross-border margin, model or identification source, and replication/data readiness; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: international-economics reviewers who separate trade, open-economy macro, international finance, and sovereign-risk audiences.

• Do the pass: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
• 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 JPubE for public-finance policy, JDE for development settings, JME for monetary macro emphasis; 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

【Scope half】trade / macro-finance
【Frontier (closest 2-3)】[paper → what it did]
【Your delta】new data / new mechanism / new identification → changed conclusion
【Originality framing】motivation or modelling structure
【Gap defended against】[recent papers that might pre-empt you]
【Next step】jie-identification-strategy

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — data and tools that often define a contribution's novelty
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — editor roster (to identify frontier anchors)