aejpol-workflow

AEJ: Policy Workflow Router (aejpol-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you **which aejpol- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (AEJ: Policy) — the American Economic Association's quarterly journal for the economic analysis OF policy. AEJ: Policy rewards a paper built around a clear policy question whose answer carries a welfare, cost-benefit, or distributional implication, identified credibly (quasi-experimental / RCT / applied theory) and reproducible to AEA standards. The policy question and its counterfactual are the through-line of every skill below.

Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as AEJ: Policy. Operational tells that you are at AEJ: Policy and not a sibling: review is single-blind through the AEA submission system (the manuscript carries the title/byline/affiliations); JEL codes are required; the AEA Data and Code Availability Policy and the AEA Data Editor run a pre-publication reproducibility check on a deposit in the AEA Data and Code Repository (openICPSR); the bar is broad policy interest + credible causal evidence + a welfare/cost-benefit reading, not a field-public-finance bar (J. Public Economics) or an identification-for-its-own-sake bar (AEJ: Applied). Re-verify volatile specifics (submission fee, editors) on the official AEA pages — official AEA pages checked 2026-06-20.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?"
• A draft needs its current bottleneck diagnosed
• Work is ping-ponging between identification, the policy framing, exhibits, and the response letter
• An AEJ: Policy decision letter arrived and the user needs to switch into revision mode

Routing table

| Current symptom | Next skill |

|-----------------|------------|

| No sharp policy question, or fit vs. JPubE / AEJ:Applied / AER unclear | aejpol-topic-selection |

| Contribution vs. the policy-evaluation literature is fuzzy or undersold | aejpol-literature-positioning |

| Causal design (DID / IV / RDD / RCT) for the policy's effect is shaky | aejpol-identification |

| Need a model/welfare framework to read estimates as a policy effect | aejpol-theory-model |

| Estimate stability, sensitivity, and threats need stress-testing | aejpol-robustness |

| Exhibits are dense; significance asterisks still present | aejpol-tables-figures |

| Prose buries the policy takeaway; abstract/intro do not land | aejpol-writing-style |

| Data/code deposit, README, AEA Data Editor prep, restricted-data path | aejpol-replication-package |

| Want to anticipate the referees' objections before submitting | aejpol-referee-strategy |

| Ready to submit via the AEA system; need a preflight | aejpol-submission |

| Received an R&R; need a response-letter strategy | aejpol-rebuttal |

Default order

1. aejpol-topic-selection — lock the policy question + the welfare/cost-benefit stake
2. aejpol-literature-positioning — stake the contribution vs. the policy-evaluation frontier
3. aejpol-identification — credible quasi-experimental / RCT evaluation of the policy
4. aejpol-theory-model — the framework that maps estimates to a welfare/policy object
5. aejpol-robustness — sensitivity, threats, specification stability
6. aejpol-tables-figures — exhibits without significance asterisks; a policy-relevant headline exhibit
7. aejpol-writing-style — translate estimates into a clear policy takeaway (abstract + intro last)
8. aejpol-replication-package — assemble the AEA-compliant deposit
9. aejpol-referee-strategy — pre-empt the objections referees will raise
10. aejpol-submission — AEA system preflight
11. aejpol-rebuttal — after the R&R

> aejpol-writing-style is a late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification/robustness settle.

Anti-patterns

• Treating AEJ: Policy like J. Public Economics (field-only, no broad-interest policy framing) or AEJ: Applied (identification-driven applied micro with no policy question)
• Deferring aejpol-replication-package to acceptance — the AEA Data Editor checks before publication
• Letting aejpol-tables-figures polish exhibits while identification is still moving
• Reporting a clean causal estimate with no welfare / cost-benefit / distributional reading — the AEJ: Policy "so what"

Routing by paper archetype

The bottleneck differs by how the policy is identified. Read the archetype, then enter the chain at the right link.

| Archetype | Likely first bottleneck | Enter at |

|-----------|-------------------------|----------|

| reform / law change (staggered) | TWFE bias; modern DID; pre-trends | aejpol-identification |

| eligibility threshold / formula | RDD / bunching design + density test | aejpol-identification |

| field experiment / RCT of a program | estimand + pre-registration + welfare cost | aejpol-topic-selection → aejpol-identification |

| sufficient-statistics / structural welfare | mapping reduced-form estimate to welfare | aejpol-theory-model |

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My estimate of a tax-credit expansion on employment is clean, but a referee says the paper 'has no policy point' and the welfare claim is hand-waved." Two AEJ: Policy pushbacks — no welfare/cost-benefit reading and takeaway not framed as a policy lesson — owned by aejpol-theory-model (the welfare mapping) and aejpol-writing-style (the takeaway). Route to aejpol-theory-model to turn the employment elasticity into a marginal-value-of-public-funds / cost-per-job number, then aejpol-writing-style for the policy sentence.

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:        -> aejpol-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:              -> aejpol-submission
elif anticipating_referees:        -> aejpol-referee-strategy
elif exhibits_or_significance:     -> aejpol-tables-figures
elif estimate_unstable:            -> aejpol-robustness
elif welfare_mapping_missing:      -> aejpol-theory-model
elif identification_shaky:         -> aejpol-identification
elif claim_or_positioning_fuzzy:   -> aejpol-literature-positioning
else:                              -> aejpol-topic-selection