jeg-topic-selection
GitHub用于评估项目是否适合投稿《经济增长杂志》。通过检查主题是否聚焦长期增长或动态宏观经济学核心机制，而非边缘结果，判断其是否符合该专业期刊的 scope 与野心要求。
Trigger Scenarios
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jeg-topic-selection -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "jeg-topic-selection",
"description": "Use when deciding whether a project is a first-order economic-growth question that fits the Journal of Economic Growth (JEG) — a specialist Springer Nature outlet for growth and dynamic macroeconomics, not a general-interest journal. Screens scope, ambition, and theory\/empirics fit before writing."
}
Topic Selection (jeg-topic-selection)
When to trigger
- Before committing months to a project you hope to send to JEG
- When unsure whether your question is "growth enough" for a specialist outlet
- When a referee or colleague has said the paper "isn't really about growth"
The JEG scope gate
JEG publishes theoretical and empirical research in economic growth and dynamic macroeconomics. A paper fits when the dependent phenomenon is long-run growth, development, or the dynamics that drive them, not when growth is a side outcome. In-scope cores include:
- Neoclassical and endogenous growth (R&D, ideas, increasing returns)
- Human capital accumulation, education, and skill formation
- Fertility, the demographic transition, and unified growth theory
- Trade and growth; financial development and growth
- Migration, technological change, and structural transformation
- The political economy of growth and institutions; OLG models
Calibrate ambition to a specialist (not general-interest) outlet
JEG does not require a paper to interest all of economics, but it does demand a first-order growth question answered with either real theoretical novelty or credible empirics. Ask:
- Is the question about a growth mechanism, not a within-field micro estimate that merely mentions growth?
- Does it speak to a live debate in the growth literature (e.g., the sources of cross-country income differences, the demographic transition, the institutions-vs-geography-vs-human-capital triangle)?
- Theory papers: is there a new mechanism, a more general result, or a resolution of a tension in existing growth models — not a marginal parameterization?
- Empirical papers: is the variation informative about a growth-relevant causal channel, and is the sample (often cross-country or long-run panel) suited to the claim?
Decision aids
- Could the abstract's main sentence start "We show that [growth/development outcome] is driven by..."? If not, the growth content may be incidental.
- Is the natural home a field growth/development outlet rather than a general-interest top-5? JEG sits precisely in that specialist slot — lean into the growth mechanism.
Anti-patterns
- Pitching a labor/finance/IO paper that touches GDP as a "growth" paper.
- A theory paper that re-derives a known steady state with a cosmetic tweak.
- A cross-country regression with no defensible growth mechanism behind the correlation.
- Assuming general-interest novelty is required — it is not; growth-field first-order-ness is.
Borderline-fit triage
| Candidate project | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Microcredit RCT with household-income effects | wrong venue | short-run, partial-equilibrium; no growth mechanism at stake |
| Historical plough adoption → gender norms → development | strong fit | deep determinant with a cultural-transmission mechanism |
| Schooling reform and 30-year regional growth | reframe | fits if the human-capital-to-growth channel is the object, not the reform |
| Optimal capital-tax dynamics in an OLG model | fit | dynamic-macro core, provided transition implications lead |
| Firm-level productivity dispersion in one sector | wrong venue | aggregate growth content incidental to the question |
Worked vignette — stress-testing a deep-determinants idea
Idea: "Regions with historical irrigation agriculture developed more hierarchical institutions and grow slower today." Gate checks (illustrative): the dependent phenomenon is comparative development — pass. Live debate — joins the geography-versus-institutions exchange — pass. Mechanism — the chain irrigation → coordination demands → state centralization → modern factor allocation must be evidenced, not narrated; plan intermediate-outcome data now. Feasibility — requires geocoded historical agronomy data plus a credible plan for Conley inference and an exclusion-restriction defense before the first regression is run. Verdict: strong fit conditional on the mechanism evidence — schedule that evidence as a main exhibit from day one, or the project decays into another unpublishable long-run correlation.
Output format
【Question】one sentence (growth/dynamic-macro phenomenon as the object)
【In-scope core】endogenous growth / human capital / fertility / trade / institutions / ...
【Paper type】theory / empirical / quantitative
【First-order?】yes/no + the debate it joins
【Verdict】strong fit / reframe / wrong venue
【Next skill】jeg-literature-positioning
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 13:34
