From jmcb-skills
Positions a Journal of Money, Credit and Banking manuscript's contribution against the monetary, banking, and macro-finance literature. Sharpens the 'what is new and why JMCB' claim.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/jmcb-skills:jmcb-literature-positioningThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- The contribution paragraph reads as "we add bank-level data to a known result" without a sharp delta
JMCB referees are monetary/banking specialists who know the canonical mechanisms cold — the bank lending channel (Bernanke–Blinder, Kashyap–Stein), the financial accelerator (Bernanke–Gertler–Gilchrist), high-frequency monetary identification (Kuttner; Gertler–Karadi; Nakamura–Steinsson), the deposits channel (Drechsler–Savov–Schnabl), and the information effect (Jarociński–Karadi). Positioning here is not a literature dump; it is a precise statement of which mechanism you sharpen, overturn, or measure, and why a money/credit/banking audience should care. The contribution must survive the question "what would the field believe differently after reading this?"
This bar is sharper than at a general-interest journal because the audience is specialized: a referee already knows the channel and the closest five papers, so a vague "we contribute to the literature on X" lands as filler. The contribution has to be stated as a position relative to named work — what you confirm in a new setting, what you overturn, what you measure that was previously only assumed.
The same result reads differently depending on the audience. For JMCB, foreground the monetary/credit/policy mechanism, not the econometric novelty (that framing belongs to a methods journal) and not the firm-finance angle (that belongs to JBF/JFI). When a reviewer might think "this is a JME paper," answer it in the intro: state the policy or measurement payoff that makes it a JMCB paper. When they might think "this is JBF," foreground the transmission/systemic dimension.
For each, the move that satisfies a JMCB referee is the contrast sentence: "Unlike [closest paper], which [limitation], we [what is new], implying [what changes]." A literature section without that sentence for the 2–3 nearest papers reads as a survey, not a contribution.
JMCB referees expect both the seminal references (so they see you know the lineage) and the current frontier (so they see the paper is not five years stale). Cite the foundational channel paper, the most-cited recent methodological reference your design uses, and the 2–3 papers a referee would consider closest competitors. Omitting an obvious competitor is the single fastest way to draw a hostile report; if a near-rival exists, cite it and differentiate rather than hoping it goes unnoticed.
A practical heuristic: the likeliest referees are the authors of your closest 3–5 papers. Position so that each of them, reading your differentiation, would agree it is fair — neither dismissive of their work nor a re-run of it. Engaging their contribution generously while stating your distinct delta is what converts a potential adversary into a supportive reviewer.
Keep the citation set disciplined for length, too: the reference list counts toward the ~40-page recommendation, so cite what does positioning work and resist the urge to pad the bibliography for appearance.
JMCB positioning is carried in two places, and both must agree. The introduction states the contribution as a single delta sentence and names the policy payoff; the related-literature paragraph or section does the careful differentiation against the 3–5 closest papers. A common failure is an ambitious intro claim ("we are first to show…") that the literature section then quietly undercuts by citing a near-identical predecessor. Make the two consistent: if a close competitor exists, the intro should already be framed as a refinement, extension, or correction of it, not as a first.
resources/official-source-map.mdA paper estimates the deposits channel of monetary policy with branch-level data. The first contribution paragraph says "we provide new evidence on the deposits channel using granular data." A JMCB referee would read that as incremental. The repositioning: anchor to Drechsler–Savov–Schnabl as the canonical deposits-channel reference, then state the delta as a contrast — "Unlike prior work that infers the channel from county-level deposit flows, our branch-level data isolate within-bank-across-market variation, showing the channel operates through branch market power rather than bank-level pricing, which implies antitrust and branching policy, not just rate policy, shapes transmission." Now the canonical lineage, the precise delta, and the policy payoff are all explicit, and the contribution is unmistakably a JMCB one.
Ask a coauthor to read only the abstract and the contribution paragraph, then state in one sentence what the field believes differently. If they cannot, the positioning is not yet sharp enough — the delta is buried or the policy payoff is missing. Iterate until that one sentence comes back cleanly, because that is exactly the sentence a referee will use (or fail to find) when writing the report.
【Journal】Journal of Money, Credit and Banking
【Skill】jmcb-literature-positioning
【Canonical mechanism】channel + seminal refs the paper engages
【One-sentence delta】what the field believes differently afterward
【Closest work】3–5 papers + the explicit contrast to each
【Bridge】which literatures are joined and where they connect
【Policy payoff】who acts differently given the contribution
【Sibling boundary】why this is a JMCB contribution, not JME / AEJ:Macro / JBF
【Next skill】jmcb-identification
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin jmcb-skillsPositions JME manuscripts against monetary/macro literatures (DSGE, policy transmission, intermediation) to pre-empt reviewer objections and avoid standalone surveys.
Positions a Journal of Banking & Finance manuscript against banking, intermediation, corporate finance, investments, regulation, and capital-market literatures to state a precise contribution.
Stakes a JIMF manuscript's contribution against the international-finance frontier by differentiating from the closest papers in recognizable research programs.