From rje-skills
Positions a manuscript against the industrial-organization frontier for The RAND Journal of Economics, citing prior IO work in RJE author-date style without a standalone survey.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/rje-skills:rje-literature-positioningThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
- The related-work section reads like a survey instead of a positioning argument
RJE is the flagship industrial-organization journal (formerly the Bell Journal of Economics), so referees are IO insiders who know the canon and the current frontier. Positioning must show exactly what your article adds to the IO conversation — a new structural method, new estimates for a market, a new mechanism, or a theoretical result — not summarize the field. Engage the specific strand your contribution touches:
For each relevant strand, name the closest prior articles, state what they established, and pinpoint the gap your work closes. Distinguish a method contribution (you estimate something previously hard to identify) from a substantive one (you answer a market/policy question prior tools could not).
Pick the strand your contribution actually touches, then identify the anchor literature referees will expect you to engage. Engaging the wrong strand reads as not knowing the field.
| Your object | IO strand to engage | What referees expect you to cite |
|---|---|---|
| Estimated demand elasticities | Discrete-choice / random-coefficients demand | The BLP lineage and its differentiation-instrument descendants |
| Markups / market power | Conduct, pass-through, the production-function markup debate | Both the structural-IO and the recent markup-measurement strands |
| Entry / market structure | Static and dynamic entry games | The entry-game and dynamic-oligopoly estimation lineage |
| Merger effects | Merger simulation and retrospectives | Both the simulation method and the ex-post retrospective evidence |
| Platform / two-sided pricing | Two-sided markets and network effects | The platform-competition and attention-market literatures |
| Vertical contracts | Vertical relations, foreclosure, bargaining | The vertical-restraints and Nash-in-Nash bargaining strands |
Suppose your article estimates how a food-delivery platform's commission structure affects restaurant entry and consumer prices. Positioning moves, not a survey:
【Strands engaged】[demand / conduct / entry-dynamics / regulation / organizations / auctions]
【Closest prior work】[3-6 articles, author-date]
【Gap closed】one sentence
【Contribution type】method / substantive / theoretical
【Citation style】author-date, no page/issue numbers? [Y/N]
【Next step】rje-identification-strategy
npx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin rje-skillsPositions a JOLE manuscript against the labor literature by staking the contribution against closest papers under Chicago author-date citation norms.
Helps assess fit, reframe manuscripts, and navigate desk-reject risks when targeting RAND Journal of Economics for industrial-organization papers.
Positions a REStud manuscript against the closest related work by confronting nearest papers and stating the marginal contribution precisely.