jhe-workflow

JHE Workflow Router (jhe-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you **which jhe- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the Journal of Health Economics (JHE) — Elsevier's field flagship for health economics. JHE publishes economic analyses that deepen understanding of the value, production, or distribution of health or healthcare: insurance design and demand, provider incentives and payment, healthcare markets and competition, medical technology and pharmaceuticals, health behaviors (smoking, obesity, addiction), health and human capital, health-policy evaluation, and health disparities. What earns space is credible causal identification fused with institutional health-system knowledge — a clean design that a referee who knows Medicaid, DRGs, or Part D would trust.

Operational tells that you are at JHE and not a sibling: submission is via Elsevier Editorial Manager (editorialmanager.com/jhlthec); review is single-anonymized (referees see authors — so anonymization is not a desk-reject trigger, unlike the AEA journals); the journal takes papers of any length and encourages short papers; the data/code policy is "encouraged," not a mandatory pre-publication openICPSR deposit (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Distinguish JHE from AJHE (ASHEcon/Chicago, US-health-policy-leaning), Journal of Public Economics (tax/transfer/public-finance core), Health Economics (Wiley, broader methods/measurement), and AEJ: Economic Policy (AEA policy generalist). JHE is the Elsevier field flagship — the question must be a health-economics question, not health as one application of a public-finance paper.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?" on a JHE-targeted draft
• A draft's current bottleneck needs diagnosing
• Work is ping-ponging between design, institutions, exhibits, and the response letter
• A JHE decision letter arrived and the user needs to switch into revision mode

Routing table

| Current symptom | Next skill |

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

| Scope/fit unclear; is this health economics or a public-finance paper in disguise? | jhe-topic-selection |

| Contribution vs. the health-econ frontier is fuzzy or undersold | jhe-literature-positioning |

| Causal design (policy variation, eligibility RD, selection into insurance) is shaky | jhe-identification |

| A demand/insurance/provider model or its mechanism is loose | jhe-theory-model |

| Results may be specification-, sample-, or inference-fragile | jhe-robustness |

| Exhibits are dense; the health-policy result is hard to find | jhe-tables-figures |

| Prose buries the policy stakes; abstract/intro do not land | jhe-writing-style |

| Data deposit, restricted-data access path, code documentation needed | jhe-replication-package |

| Want to pre-empt likely referee objections before submission | jhe-referee-strategy |

| Ready to submit via Editorial Manager; need a preflight | jhe-submission |

| Received an R&R / decision letter; need a response-letter strategy | jhe-rebuttal |

Default order

1. jhe-topic-selection — lock the health-economics question and audience
2. jhe-literature-positioning — stake the contribution vs. the health-econ frontier
3. jhe-identification — causal design or selection/identification
4. jhe-theory-model — the demand/insurance/provider model behind the estimate
5. jhe-robustness — specification, sample, inference, mechanism stress tests
6. jhe-tables-figures — exhibits that make the health-policy result legible
7. jhe-writing-style — make the policy stakes land (abstract + intro last)
8. jhe-replication-package — assemble the deposit / restricted-data access path
9. jhe-referee-strategy — pre-mortem the likely health-econ objections
10. jhe-submission — Editorial Manager preflight
11. jhe-rebuttal — after the decision letter

> jhe-writing-style is a late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification and the headline estimate settle.

Routing by paper archetype

JHE spans several health-econ branches, and the binding constraint differs by branch. Read the archetype, then enter the chain at the right link.

| Archetype | Likely first bottleneck | Enter at |

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

| Insurance/coverage expansion (Medicaid/Medicare/exchange) | policy-variation design + spillovers to non-targeted margins | jhe-identification |

| Provider incentives / payment reform (DRG, P4P, ACO) | endogenous provider response + selection of patients | jhe-identification → jhe-theory-model |

| Health behaviors (tobacco, obesity, addiction) | tax/price variation credibility + externalities framing | jhe-identification → jhe-literature-positioning |

| Insurance demand / selection (structural) | what identifies risk preferences/adverse selection | jhe-theory-model → jhe-identification |

| Medical-technology / pharma diffusion | measurement + restricted claims-data access | jhe-identification → jhe-replication-package |

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My Medicaid-expansion DiD looks fine, but a referee says the parallel-trends story is thin and the welfare interpretation overreaches what a coverage effect can show." Two distinct JHE pushbacks — design credibility (own jhe-identification: move past TWFE, honest-DID bounds, event-study leads) and overclaiming (own jhe-theory-model + jhe-writing-style: a coverage-take-up effect is not a health-production or welfare effect without the mapping). Route to jhe-identification first; only once the coverage estimate is stable (say it settles at 4.1pp take-up, s.e. 1.0, illustrative) do you return to frame the welfare claim honestly and re-present in jhe-tables-figures.

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:            -> jhe-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:                  -> jhe-submission
elif want_to_pre-empt_referees:        -> jhe-referee-strategy
elif data_or_code_needs_packaging:     -> jhe-replication-package
elif prose_buries_the_stakes:          -> jhe-writing-style
elif exhibits_hard_to_read:            -> jhe-tables-figures
elif results_may_be_fragile:           -> jhe-robustness
elif need_a_model_to_interpret:        -> jhe-theory-model
elif design_or_selection_shaky:        -> jhe-identification
elif contribution_fuzzy:               -> jhe-literature-positioning
else:                                  -> jhe-topic-selection

What this router does NOT do

It diagnoses the binding constraint and names the next skill; it does not run analysis, draft prose, or build exhibits — those live in the specialist skills. If the user's bottleneck spans two stages (e.g., a design fix that also changes the welfare claim), route to the earlier upstream skill first and let it hand off, rather than trying to resolve both here.

Anti-patterns

• Treating JHE like AJHE, JPubE, or Health Economics — wrong audience, wrong contribution test
• Submitting a public-finance or labor paper with health as a thin application
• Anonymizing as if review were double-blind (JHE is single-anonymized; wasted effort)
• Polishing prose before the design and headline estimate are stable
• Letting the appendix carry the institutional or identification claims the main text must establish

Output format

【Target】Journal of Health Economics (Elsevier field flagship)
【Current bottleneck】fit / contribution / design / model / robustness / exhibits / style / package / submission / revision
【Archetype】coverage / provider-incentive / health-behavior / selection-structural / medtech
【Next skill】<one jhe-* skill>
【Reason】why this is the binding constraint now
【Source check】official facts verified or marked 待核实