From jleo-skills
Stress-tests identification arguments in JLEO-style empirical research: reforms, governance-form choices, court/committee assignment. Ensures designs meet institutional credibility standards.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/jleo-skills:jleo-identificationThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- The causal claim rests on OLS + controls, or TWFE on staggered institutional reforms
JLEO empirics live or die on whether the institutional or organizational variation that does the identifying is credible — because the object of interest is usually itself chosen by the agents (firms pick governance forms; legislatures pick rules; litigants select into courts). The credible-identification standards are the same as any top empirical economics journal, but the threats are institution-specific: endogenous boundaries, endogenous reform timing, selection into contract form, and strategic case selection. Name the variation, defend it, and never let the institutional story substitute for the design.
A paper estimates the effect of vertical integration on hold-up costs using firm transaction data. The naive comparison is biased: firms integrate precisely the transactions most prone to hold-up. A JLEO-credible move uses a shock to asset specificity (e.g., a technology change raising relationship-specific investment for a subset of input categories) as the source of variation, with an event study around the shock and a placebo on unaffected categories. Suppose integrated-transaction disputes fall 18% (s.e. 6, illustrative) post-shock for treated categories only — that pattern, not the cross-section, identifies the governance effect.
【Design】reform-DID / governance-choice / case-assignment / cross-institution / IV / RDD
【Identifying variation】one sentence, tied to the institution
【Selection/endogeneity threat + fix】[...]
【Diagnostics】event-study leads / balance / first-stage / density / placebo
【Inference】clustering level; few-cluster handling
【What it does NOT identify】[...]
【Next skill】jleo-theory-model
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin jleo-skillsStress-tests causal identification arguments for Journal of Law and Economics manuscripts: DiD/event studies, court/judge designs, RD, and antitrust event studies. Ensures designs meet JLE's law-and-economics credibility bar.
Stress-tests causal identification strategies (DID, IV, RDD, RCT, AKM) for labor economics manuscripts targeting the Journal of Labor Economics bar.
Stress-tests causal identification designs for JFE manuscripts: natural experiments, IV, staggered DID, RDD, and endogeneity/selection treatment.