rof-rebuttal

Review of Finance Rebuttal

Use this after an RoF decision letter. Because RoF aims to reach a final decision by the second round, the first revision is your one real chance — make the round-one response decisive rather than holding arguments back.

When to trigger

• An RoF R&R or first-round decision with referee reports has arrived.
• You need to sequence revisions and draft a point-by-point response.
• A second-round report raises a new concern and you must decide how to handle it.

Response strategy

• Separate the referees' major concerns required for publication from their suggestions, mirroring the two-bucket structure RoF asks referees to use; resolve every major concern fully before polishing suggestions.
• Answer the finance contribution first, then identification, theory, data, robustness, and exposition.
• Show, don't assert: point each response to the exact revised table, figure, section, and page; quote short new text.
• Keep the revised manuscript within the hard 60-page total cap (appendices, bibliography, figures, tables all count).
• If a new referee concern appears in round two, check whether it was raised in round one and whether it is tied to your changes; under RoF's two-round philosophy a genuinely new, unrelated concern may fall outside scope — raise this politely, via the editor, and rarely.
• Authors own the paper: you may decline a suggestion that would harm it, with reasons.
• Update replication programs, pseudo-data, logs, and the Data Availability Statement alongside manuscript revisions.

Point-by-point skeleton

Referee 1, Major Concern 1 (identification):
  Restate: <one-sentence neutral paraphrase>
  Action:  <new Table 4 cols 3-5; revised Section 5.2, pp. 18-20>
  Result:  <coefficient now X (s.e. Y); conclusion unchanged or sharpened>
  Text:    "<at most two quoted sentences of new manuscript text>"
Referee 1, Suggestion 1: adopted / adapted because ... / declined because ...
Editor letter (1 page): each major concern -> its fix; page-cap accounting
  (what moved to the internet appendix); code, pseudo-data, and DAS updates
  shipped with this revision.

Triage table for common RoF report lines

The report says	Likely intent	Round-one response
"Identification is not convincing" (major)	spine doubt	new design evidence — pre-trends, placebo, alternative estimator — not prose
"The magnitude seems implausible"	calibration doubt	benchmark against two published estimates; reconcile or correct
"Please also examine X, Y, and Z" (suggestion)	breadth wish	run the cheap ones into the internet appendix; decline scope creep with reasons
"The authors should cite [their papers]"	citation nudge	cite when genuinely relevant given RoF's author-responsibility norm; otherwise draw the boundary politely
"The European sample limits generality"	external validity	add the US or cross-region contrast, or argue why the institution isolates a universal force

Worked example — page-cap arithmetic in the revision

Illustrative. The R&R asks for three robustness exercises and a heterogeneity split. Four new tables at roughly 0.8 pages each plus notes cost about 3.5 pages against the hard 60-page ceiling. The plan: one new body table answering the bucket-1 concern; three exhibits to the internet appendix with one-line pointers; 1.5 pages of introduction trimmed — net +0.3 pages. State this accounting in the editor letter so the cap is visibly respected without burying the new evidence.

Resubmission hygiene

• Refresh the double-blind scrub: new acknowledgements, conference thanks, or repository links added during revision are classic anonymity leaks at this journal.
• If results changed materially, regenerate logs and the pseudo-dataset so the package matches the revised exhibits — a stale packet undermines the response letter.
• Verify current resubmission mechanics and any fees on Editorial Express and the journal's current author guidelines before uploading.

Anti-patterns

• Treating suggestions as binding while under-addressing a major concern.
• Drafting the letter before the revised manuscript exists.
• Saving a key result or argument for round two — it may simply be ignored.
• Defensive, adjective-heavy pushback instead of new evidence.

Output format

[Decision] R&R / reject-resubmit / conditional acceptance / other
[Revision thesis] <one sentence>
[Required concerns] <issue -> manuscript change>
[Suggestions] <accept, partially address, or explain>
[Code/data updates] <needed or complete>