red-workflow

RED Manuscript Workflow (red-workflow)

When to trigger

• Starting a paper aimed at the Review of Economic Dynamics and wanting the full path
• Unsure which RED-specific step comes next or which sibling skill to open
• Sanity-checking that nothing RED-specific (fee, code archive, single-anonymized norms) is missed

The lifecycle (RED-specific)

1. Scope check — Is the question dynamic and quantitative, studied through a dynamic model (theoretical, computational, or empirical)? RED's scope is defined by method/lens, not subfield. → red-topic-selection
2. Position — Place the paper in the dynamic-economics / SED literature. → red-literature-positioning
3. Frame the contribution — What is the marginal quantitative/dynamic advance? → red-contribution-framing
4. Identification / model logic — Assumptions and regularity conditions (theory), or causal design (empirical). → red-identification-strategy
5. Analysis — Calibration, moment-matching, estimation, numerical solution discipline. → red-data-analysis
6. Exhibits — IRFs, moment tables, model-vs-data figures. → red-tables-figures
7. Write — RED house style, author-year references, ≤250-word stand-alone abstract, 1–6 keywords. → red-writing-style
8. Stage replication — Build the data/code archive early; RED's policy is code-first. → red-replication-and-data-policy
9. Understand review — Desk screen, single-anonymized, ≥2 reviewers when sent out; plan around fast-review norms without assuming a guaranteed decision date. → red-review-process
10. Submit — Pay the USD 195 fee (USD 100 all-student), submit via ScienceDirect / Editorial Manager. → red-submission
11. Revise — Response-to-referees after an R&R; resubmissions are fee-exempt. → red-rebuttal

Anti-patterns

• Treating RED like a generalist top-5 venue and ignoring its method-defined scope
• Forgetting the per-submission fee gates the review (no fee paid → no review)
• Leaving the replication archive or Option C data statement to the accepted stage when the policy expects code-first discipline

Router diagnostics

Ask these questions before choosing the next skill:

• Is the dynamic mechanism unclear? Use red-topic-selection or red-contribution-framing.
• Is the model disciplined by too few moments or free parameters? Use red-data-analysis.
• Are assumptions, existence, uniqueness, or accuracy weak? Use red-identification-strategy.
• Are exhibits static or uninformative about dynamics? Use red-tables-figures.
• Is the archive missing a run-all path, seeds, or runtime? Use red-replication-and-data-policy.

The right RED route is usually the step that makes the dynamic model more auditable.

Stage-gate tracker

Keep one block per project and tick gates as they clear:

RED PIPELINE — [paper short title]
  G1 scope:        dynamic mechanism named; model class chosen          [date/✓]
  G2 positioning:  lineage map written; closest model identified        [ ]
  G3 discipline:   calibration table complete; every target sourced     [ ]
  G4 computation:  solver chosen; accuracy check passing                [ ]
  G5 exhibits:     mechanism figure + fit table drafted                 [ ]
  G6 archive:      run-all reproduces exhibits; readme.txt drafted      [ ]
  G7 manuscript:   abstract ≤250w; author-year refs; 1–6 keywords       [ ]
  G8 submission:   fee path decided; ScienceDirect upload checked       [ ]
  G9 review:       desk cleared; reviewer-clock expectations logged     [ ]
  G10 revision:    point-by-point reply; archive re-run and re-sent     [ ]

Gates G3–G6 are where RED differs most from a generalist target: they exist because SED-community referees re-derive calibrations and sometimes re-execute code.

Sequencing rules specific to RED

• Build the archive (G6) in parallel with the analysis, not after acceptance — the data/code policy bites before final acceptance, and retrofitting seeds and execution order into months-old solver code is the classic schedule killer for simulation-heavy papers.
• Do not draft the introduction before G2 and G3 exist; an intro written without a lineage map and a calibration table tends to over-claim and gets rewritten after the moments come in.
• Budget compute as a project resource: a global-solution model whose counterfactual takes days to run limits how many referee experiments a two-round revision can absorb.

Failure-mode router

Observed failure	Gate	Skill
Headline number moves when the grid is refined	G4	red-identification-strategy
Untargeted moments badly missed	G3	red-data-analysis
Reader cannot restate the mechanism after the intro	G1/G2	red-contribution-framing
Archive fails a clean-machine rerun	G6	red-replication-and-data-policy

Output format

[Current stage] idea / model / calibration / estimation / writing / submission / review / R&R
[Dynamic bottleneck] scope / mechanism / calibration / computation / archive / response
[Next RED skill] <red-* skill>
[Hard blocker] <fee, archive, model credibility, review risk, or none>
[Next action] <single concrete task>

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — official RED URLs behind every fact
• ../../resources/external_tools.md — Dynare, Julia/SSJ, FRED and reproducibility tooling