jme-contribution-framing

Contribution Framing (jme-contribution-framing)

When to trigger

• The result exists but the "so what for monetary economics / policy?" is undersold
• The abstract and intro list findings without a single sharp contribution claim
• You need the pitch to survive a desk screen and convince two expert referees
• You want the framing to justify an R&R invitation (the editor's ~50% publication-likelihood bar)

Why framing is high-stakes at JME

JME has a distinctive selection funnel. A first-round decision is reject or revise-and-resubmit, and editors invite a resubmission only when they judge at least a 50% likelihood of ultimate publication — so an R&R is a strong signal, and a sharp contribution claim is what tips a borderline paper into that bucket. The resubmission is then "up or out": it ends in acceptance or rejection, with no second R&R round. Because review is single anonymized with a minimum of two reviewers, your framing has to convince specialists who can see your name and will judge the marginal contribution directly.

The contribution should be legible to a macroeconomist or central banker, not just to the narrow sub-field. A JME contribution usually takes one of these shapes: a new identified fact about how a shock or policy transmits; a new mechanism in a quantitative model that changes a policy conclusion; a new quantitative magnitude that overturns or refines a prior estimate; or a policy counterfactual that a model now makes credible.

Framing checklist

• [ ] The contribution is stated in one sentence an editor could quote in a decision letter
• [ ] It is positioned as first-order for monetary economics / macro, not a marginal tweak
• [ ] The policy or aggregate lesson is explicit
• [ ] Empirical and theoretical contributions are each named (JME values both)
• [ ] The claim does not exceed what the identification or model supports
• [ ] The abstract (≤100 words, not starting with "This paper" or "We") carries this claim

Anti-patterns

• A laundry list of findings with no headline contribution
• Over-claiming a global/structural lesson from a local empirical estimate
• Framing the paper for one narrow sub-field when JME wants the broad macro relevance
• Burying the contribution on page 6 instead of in the first paragraph and the abstract

Contribution pass for Journal of Monetary Economics

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the main macro object, the identifying variation, and the policy-relevant counterfactual; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: macro and monetary economists who expect the shock, mechanism, and policy margin to be visible early.

• Do the pass: Translate the result into who learns what, which mechanism changes, and which alternative explanation is ruled out; keep the contribution narrower than the evidence.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against JIE for open-economy trade/finance emphasis, RED for dynamic macro theory, AEJ Macro for broader field positioning; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Contribution】one quotable sentence
【Type】new fact / new mechanism / new magnitude / policy counterfactual
【Policy lesson】one line
【Within design limits?】Y/N (no over-claiming)
【Abstract-ready?】≤100 words, no "This paper"/"We" start? Y/N
【Next step】jme-identification-strategy