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Stakes a JIMF manuscript's contribution against the international-finance frontier by differentiating from the closest papers in recognizable research programs.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/jimf-skills:jimf-literature-positioningThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- The intro lists related work but never says what this paper does that the frontier does not
JIMF is a field journal, so positioning is judged against the international monetary-finance literature specifically, not all of macro or all of finance. The bar is: name the closest two or three papers, state the precise margin on which you move past them, and show the margin matters for an open-economy question. The frontier clusters into recognizable programs — the global financial cycle and the trilemma/dilemma debate; dominant-currency pricing and exchange-rate pass-through; monetary-policy spillovers and the international transmission channel; capital-flow push vs. pull and the literature on capital controls / FX intervention; sovereign risk, original sin, and external debt; and international asset pricing (UIP deviations, carry, currency risk premia). Locate your paper in one of these and differentiate within it.
The discipline this imposes: you are not differentiating from "the literature," you are differentiating from the two or three specific papers a JIMF referee in your sub-program will have in mind. Identify them honestly — they are usually the ones you most wish did not exist — and make the margin against them precise. A positioning that survives contact with the closest competitor survives the referee.
| Positioning move | Strong version (JIMF-credible) | Weak version (desk-reject risk) |
|---|---|---|
| New mechanism | "Prior work attributes flow reversals to the GFCy; we show the bank-lending channel does the work" | "We add bank variables to a flows regression" |
| New identification | "Prior cross-country OLS is confounded; we use a foreign policy surprise as an instrument" | "We use the same panel with more controls" |
| New measurement | "We construct invoicing-currency-level pass-through, not aggregate ERPT" | "We use a longer sample of aggregate ERPT" |
| New external validity | "The dominant-currency result was US-centric; we test it for EM exporters" | "We replicate the result for one more country" |
| Reconciling a puzzle | "We reconcile the trilemma vs. dilemma debate via the regime margin" | "We restate both sides without adjudicating" |
The same result can be positioned two ways, and JIMF accepts both — but pick one and commit. A policy-led positioning differentiates on external validity, country coverage, and the bounded implication for a central bank or the IMF; its closest competitors are other policy-relevant cross-country studies, and its contribution is often "we provide the first credible estimate for the relevant policy population." An academic-led positioning differentiates on identification or a new object; its competitors are the methodological frontier papers, and its contribution is "we identify what prior work could only correlate." A paper that tries to be both at once usually convinces neither referee; lead with one and let the other be a benefit.
Spend one or two sentences placing the paper against the journal that could plausibly claim it. Against JIE: emphasize the monetary/financial (not real-trade) channel. Against JME/JMCB: emphasize the cross-border/open-economy margin (not domestic monetary policy). Against JFE/RF: emphasize the international risk or exchange-rate object (not a closed-economy asset-pricing puzzle). This is not throat-clearing — it is how a JIMF editor confirms the paper is theirs.
JIMF does not reward an exhaustive survey; it rewards a map with your pin on it. Group the literature into the two or three streams your paper touches, give each stream one sentence and its representative paper, then place yourself. A useful shape: "Three strands bear on this question. The first [stream + 1 cite] establishes X but takes Y as given. The second [stream + 1 cite] relaxes Y but in a closed economy. We sit at their intersection: [your move]." This signals command of the field without burning four pages, and it makes the gap visible rather than asserted.
When you cite a foundational result, cite it precisely: the global-financial-cycle and monetary-autonomy claim, the dominant-currency-paradigm pass-through result, the high-frequency monetary-spillover finding, the original-sin / sovereign-external-debt argument — each has a specific paper and a specific claim, and an international-finance referee will notice a loose attribution. Precision here buys credibility for the whole positioning.
A practical test for the related-work draft: hand it to a colleague who works in a different field and ask them to state, in one sentence, what your paper adds. If they cannot, the positioning is buried in the survey and needs the pin made explicit — the contribution sentence should be findable without reading the whole section.
A draft on exchange-rate pass-through opens with a twelve-paragraph survey and never states what is new; a referee writes "this is Gopinath-style dominant-currency pass-through with more countries." The JIMF fix: collapse the survey into three labeled strands (aggregate ERPT; dominant-currency pricing; invoicing-currency heterogeneity), name one representative paper for each, and stake the pin: "Unlike the aggregate-ERPT literature, and going beyond the dominant-currency result that prices are sticky in dollars, we measure pass-through at the invoicing-currency level within exporters and show the dollar margin is concentrated in a subset of firms — which reconciles the high aggregate stickiness with the firm-level heterogeneity." The contribution is now one sentence against named work, and the positioning section is a page, not five.
resources/official-source-map.md or are marked 待核实【Journal】Journal of International Money and Finance
【Skill】jimf-literature-positioning
【Verdict】staked / sharpen / reroute
【Frontier program】GFCy / DCP-ERPT / spillovers / flows-controls / sovereign / international AP
【Closest work】<2-3 named papers>
【Contribution sentence】"Unlike __, we __, which matters because __"
【Sibling boundary】why not JIE / JME / JMCB / JFE
【Source status】verified / 待核实
【Next skill】jimf-identification
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin jimf-skillsPositions a JFI manuscript by naming the closest intermediation papers and the mechanism gap it fills.
Builds a sharp positioning argument for JFE manuscripts whose related-work section reads as a list and lacks clear marginal contribution relative to the top-3 finance frontier.
Positions a JIE manuscript against the international-trade or open-economy-macro frontier, staking the contribution against relevant literatures without drafting the paper.