jle-workflow

JLE Workflow Router (jle-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which jle- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at The Journal of Law and Economics (JLE) — the University of Chicago Press journal founded in 1958 that defined the field of law and economics (the Coase–Stigler–Director tradition). JLE rewards credible economic analysis of law, regulation, and legal institutions: antitrust and competition, regulation and its incidence, crime and deterrence, property and contract, corporate and securities law, litigation, intellectual property, and the political economy of law. The house sensibility is Chicago price theory plus an institutional eye — a real legal or regulatory question, a credible empirical design or a disciplined theoretical model, and respect for how the rule actually operates.

Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as JLE. Operational tells that you are at JLE and not a sibling: review is single-blind (the title page carries author names; referees stay anonymous) — so do not anonymize the manuscript; submission is via the JLE Editorial Manager site; a US$100 submission fee applies (beginning May 1, 2026; non-refundable; editorial review does not start until it is paid); the data and replication policy requires data, programs, and computation details to be available for replication before publication; house citation is Chicago author-date. Editors as of 2026: Elliott Ash, Matthew Backus, Dennis W. Carlton, Dhammika Dharmapala, Thomas J. Miles, Sam Peltzman (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Re-verify volatile specifics on journals.uchicago.edu/journals/jle.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?"
• A draft needs its current bottleneck diagnosed
• Work is ping-ponging between identification, framing, exhibits, and the response letter
• A JLE decision letter arrived and the user needs to switch into revision mode

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
Unsure the paper fits JLE vs. Journal of Legal Studies / JLEO / ALER	jle-topic-selection
Contribution vs. the law-and-economics literature is fuzzy or undersold	jle-literature-positioning
Causal design rests on OLS+controls, TWFE on staggered law changes, or a weak IV	jle-identification
A model of the legal rule / deterrence / contracting is needed	jle-theory-model
Results not shown robust to specification, sample, inference, jurisdiction	jle-robustness
Exhibits dense; the legal-variation estimate not legible in one table/figure	jle-tables-figures
Prose buries the institution and the design; intro does not land	jle-writing-style
Data/code deposit for the pre-publication replication requirement	jle-replication-package
Want to anticipate referee objections before submitting	jle-referee-strategy
Ready to submit via Editorial Manager; need a preflight	jle-submission
Received an R&R; need a response-letter strategy	jle-rebuttal

Default order

1. jle-topic-selection — place the legal/regulatory question at JLE, not a sibling
2. jle-literature-positioning — stake the marginal contribution to law and economics
3. jle-identification — make the law-to-outcome causal mapping credible
4. jle-theory-model — add the price-theory / deterrence model that interprets the estimate
5. jle-robustness — show the headline survives specification, sample, jurisdiction, inference
6. jle-tables-figures — make the legal-variation result legible in one exhibit
7. jle-writing-style — make the institution and the design land (abstract + intro last)
8. jle-replication-package — assemble the data/code deposit for the pre-publication check
9. jle-referee-strategy — pre-empt the objections this design and field invite
10. jle-submission — Editorial Manager preflight (single-blind, fee, title page)
11. jle-rebuttal — after the R&R

jle-writing-style is a late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification and robustness settle.

Anti-patterns

• Anonymizing the manuscript — JLE is single-blind; the title page carries author names. Blinding is the wrong reflex here (it is correct at AEJ/JLEO, not JLE).
• Treating the replication deposit as an acceptance-day chore — the policy requires materials available before publication; build it as you go (jle-replication-package)
• Polishing exhibits (jle-tables-figures) while the identification or headline estimate is still moving
• Framing the paper as doctrinal legal scholarship (drifts toward Journal of Legal Studies) or as organizational/positive-political-economy (drifts toward JLEO) instead of Chicago-style law-and-economics

Routing by paper archetype

JLE spans several law-and-economics designs, and the first bottleneck differs by archetype. Read the archetype, then enter the chain at the right link.

Archetype	Likely first bottleneck	Enter at
law change / staggered statute adoption (DiD / event study)	negative-weighting under staggered timing; parallel trends across jurisdictions	jle-identification
court / judge / case-assignment design (IV or as-good-as-random)	random-assignment defense; monotonicity; exclusion	jle-identification
regulatory threshold / eligibility cutoff (RD)	density manipulation; bandwidth; bunching	jle-identification → jle-robustness
antitrust / enforcement event (merger, decree, entry)	event-window contamination; market definition; control markets	jle-identification → jle-robustness
theory of a legal rule / deterrence / liability	a model whose comparative statics are testable, not decorative	jle-theory-model
measurement of a legal/regulatory object (new index, hand-coded doctrine)	validity of the measure; framing the contribution without causal overclaim	jle-topic-selection → jle-literature-positioning

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My event study on states adopting a tort-reform statute looks fine, but a referee says the two-way fixed-effects estimate is contaminated by already-reformed states and the parallel-trends story across jurisdictions is thin." That is two JLE pushbacks — forbidden comparisons under staggered statute adoption and cross-jurisdiction pre-trend credibility — both owned by jle-identification, with the presentation in jle-robustness. Route there first; only once the heterogeneity-robust estimate is stable (say liability claims fall 8% [s.e. 3], illustrative) do you return to jle-tables-figures and jle-rebuttal to present and defend it.

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:        -> jle-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:              -> jle-submission
elif anticipating_referees:        -> jle-referee-strategy
elif building_replication_package: -> jle-replication-package
elif intro_or_abstract_weak:       -> jle-writing-style
elif exhibits_dense:               -> jle-tables-figures
elif results_not_robust:           -> jle-robustness
elif needs_model_of_the_rule:      -> jle-theory-model
elif identification_shaky:         -> jle-identification
elif contribution_fuzzy:           -> jle-literature-positioning
else:                              -> jle-topic-selection