jegeo-referee-strategy

Referee Strategy (jegeo-referee-strategy)

When to trigger

• Before submission, to pre-empt the objections a two-community panel will raise
• The paper leans heavily toward one tradition and you need to armor the side a hostile referee will attack
• You want to decide which robustness/exhibit work is worth doing now vs. holding for an R&R
• You are choosing which reviewers to suggest or oppose for a JEG submission

The defining feature: you will face both communities

JEG's review almost always pairs an economist and a geographer (the board is drawn from both, and editors deliberately route across the bridge). Their objections are systematically different, and a paper that satisfies one often provokes the other. Plan for both, in one manuscript, under double-anonymous review.

| The economist referee tends to attack | The geographer referee tends to attack |

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

| identification, selection, weak instruments | "where is the geography?" — space as mere fixed effect |

| spatial autocorrelation / overstated inference | absence of mechanism, context, or institutional texture |

| external validity of a single setting | over-formalization that flattens real places |

| whether the model is identified vs. calibrated | a quantitative result with no theory it speaks to |

| magnitude and economic significance | scale/units chosen without geographic reasoning (MAUP) |

Pre-empting each side

For the economist referee: make the identification and inference bulletproof before submission — modern staggered estimators, Conley SEs, spillover bounds, a defended instrument (see jegeo-identification, jegeo-robustness). Report magnitudes, not asterisks. Address external validity head-on.

For the geographer referee: make place do real analytical work — name the mechanism in prose, justify the spatial scale substantively, engage the evolutionary/institutional literature, and ensure the maps argue (see jegeo-theory-model, jegeo-tables-figures). Never let space be only a control.

The bridge insurance: the single best defense is a paper where the mechanism is the same object both referees can grip — the economist sees it identified, the geographer sees it grounded in place. If you can write that one sentence, you can usually satisfy both.

Triage: fix now vs. hold for R&R

• Fix now: anything that could trigger a desk-reject or a "reject" from either community — missing mechanism, fragile spatial scale, overstated inference, no engagement with half the literature.
• Anticipate and pre-answer in the text: known limitations either side will raise — state them and bound them rather than hoping they go unnoticed.
• Hold for R&R only: large extensions a referee might request but that are not load-bearing for the current claim; signal willingness without pre-building everything.

Reviewer suggestions

• Suggest reviewers from both communities so the editor can balance the panel; a list skewed to one side signals a one-community paper.
• Oppose reviewers only for genuine conflicts; do not try to engineer an all-friendly panel — JEG editors expect cross-disciplinary scrutiny.

The cover letter as a routing signal

Under double-anonymous review the cover letter is your one chance to tell the editor how to balance the panel. Use it deliberately:

• Name the paper's contribution in a sentence that signals both communities — so the editor knows to seek one economist and one geographer rather than two of either.
• If the paper leans strongly to one tradition, say what it offers the other; this pre-empts the editor reading it as out-of-scope for half the board.
• Suggested and opposed reviewers in the system should reinforce the same message — a balanced list tells the editor you understand JEG is a bridge.

A cover letter that frames the paper as single-community invites a single-community desk read, which at JEG is a fast rejection.

Checklist

• [ ] Economist-side objections (identification, inference, external validity) pre-empted with specific fixes
• [ ] Geographer-side objections (mechanism, scale, place, literature) pre-empted with specific fixes
• [ ] One mechanism sentence both referees can grip is in the paper
• [ ] Known limitations stated and bounded in-text, not hidden
• [ ] Suggested reviewers span both communities; oppositions are genuine conflicts only
• [ ] Manuscript is double-anonymous-clean (body text, acknowledgments, file metadata)

Anti-patterns

• Armoring only the side you come from and leaving the other community's objection wide open
• Assuming both referees are economists (or both geographers) — JEG rarely works that way
• A reviewer-suggestion list drawn entirely from one tradition
• Hoping a known spatial-scale or mechanism weakness goes unnoticed rather than pre-answering it
• Trying to stack an all-friendly panel instead of building a paper that survives scrutiny
• Leaving authorship traces that defeat double-anonymity

Worked vignette (illustrative)

A paper using a quantitative-spatial model to evaluate a transport investment is strong on identification and inference. The author, an economist, armors only that side. Anticipate the geographer referee: they will ask why "region" is the unit (MAUP), where the institutional mechanism is (why do firms actually relocate?), and whether the model flattens real places into representative agents. Pre-empting that side before submission — adding a commuting-zone robustness check, a prose mechanism, and a paragraph on heterogeneity across regional contexts — converts a likely split decision into a clean R&R. The economist's questions were already answered; the unanticipated geographer was the real risk.

A simple pre-submission red-team

Read your own paper twice, once as each referee:

1. As the economist: Is anything not identified? Is inference honest under spatial correlation? Would I believe the magnitude? Does it travel beyond this setting?
2. As the geographer: Does place do analytical work, or is it a control? Is there a mechanism grounded in real regions and institutions? Is the scale defended? Did the authors engage my literature?

Any "no" in either pass is a risk to fix now or pre-answer in the text — not to discover in the reports.

Output format

【Journal】Journal of Economic Geography
【Skill】jegeo-referee-strategy
【Economist-side risks】top objections + fix status (now/anticipated/R&R)
【Geographer-side risks】top objections + fix status (now/anticipated/R&R)
【Bridge sentence】the one mechanism both referees can grip
【Reviewer suggestions】names/areas spanning both communities
【Anonymity】double-anonymous clean? [Y/N]
【Next skill】jegeo-submission