Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
› jleo-topic-selection
jleo-topic-selection
GitHub用于评估法学、经济学与组织学交叉选题是否契合JLEO期刊。通过组织性、机制、双重传统等测试，判断其是否为真正的制度/治理贡献，而非纯市场或应用微观研究，帮助精炼问题与受众定位。
Trigger Scenarios
不确定选题适合JLEO还是其他 sibling journals
存在法律规则效应但缺乏组织收益分析
质疑是否为真正的法经组织贡献
正式模型与现实机构联系薄弱
选题接近但未突出组织治理角度
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill jleo-topic-selection -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "jleo-topic-selection",
"description": "Use when scoping or pitching a topic for a Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (JLEO) manuscript — testing whether the question is a genuine law-economics-organization \/ positive-political-economy contribution rather than a sibling-journal fit. Sharpens the question and its audience; it does not design identification or build the model."
}
Topic Selection (jleo-topic-selection)
When to trigger
- You have a result or a model and are unsure whether JLEO is the right home versus JLE, JLS, ALER, or Organization Science
- A reduced-form finding about a legal rule exists but the institutional or organizational payoff is not yet articulated
- A coauthor asks "is this law-and-economics enough, or is it really just applied micro / political science?"
- A formal PPE model is built but its connection to a real institution (a legislature, a court, a regulatory agency, a firm boundary) is thin
- The topic feels adjacent to JLEO but the organization/governance angle has not been made the headline
What JLEO actually rewards
JLEO was founded in 1985 by Williamson and Mashaw to host the law-economics-organization synthesis, and its center of gravity has stayed there. A JLEO topic earns its place when the payoff is an institutional or organizational claim — about why a governance structure, contract form, or political institution takes the shape it does, and what follows. Run the candidate topic through these tests:
- The organization test. Is there a genuine organization — a firm boundary, a hierarchy, a governance structure, a committee, a bureaucracy, a court — whose form or behavior the paper explains? Pure market-outcome questions belong at JLE. JLEO wants the inside or the design of the institution.
- The mechanism test. Can you name the institutional mechanism in one sentence (transaction-cost economizing, agency/incentive, credible commitment, separation of powers, hold-up, residual control)? If the "mechanism" is just "X affects Y," the topic is not yet a JLEO topic.
- The dual-tradition test. Does it speak to either transaction-cost / theory-of-the-firm economics or positive political economy (the North–Weingast–Williamson institutional line)? Topics fitting neither tradition are usually sibling fits.
- The both-methods test. JLEO publishes formal theory and empirics. If the paper is purely descriptive with no model and no credible design, ask which it will become.
- The "so what for institutions" test. Does the result change how we understand institutional design or governance choice — not just estimate a parameter?
Branch by what you have
| You are holding | JLEO-fit move | Trap to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| A causal effect of a legal/regulatory rule | Recast the payoff as an institutional/governance claim, or send to JLE | Selling a market effect as if it were organizational |
| A make-or-buy / contract-form pattern in firm data | Frame as transaction-cost governance choice with selection acknowledged | Descriptive correlation with no governance logic |
| A formal model of a political institution | Tie comparative statics to a real legislature/court/agency; add a test or institutional case | A model with no institutional anchor (reads as pure theory) |
| An organizational/personnel finding inside firms | Position in the economics-of-organization line (agency, incentives), not org-behavior | Drifting into Organization Science's behavioral register |
| A historical-institutions / development result | Connect to credible-commitment / institutions-and-growth PPE canon | A history paper with no institutional-economics frame |
Checklist
- The institutional or organizational object of study is named, not just a market or outcome
- The mechanism is stated in one sentence in a recognized JLEO tradition (TCE / agency / PPE / theory of the firm)
- The paper is clearly TCE-/theory-of-the-firm or PPE flavored, not a JLE price-theory or Org-Science behavioral fit
- You can name the JLEO audience segment that would champion it — and the one that would desk-reject it
- If empirical, there is a credible design in view; if theoretical, a real institution it speaks to
- Process facts cited are in
resources/official-source-map.mdor marked 待核实
Anti-patterns
- Pitching a pure market-outcome study (antitrust, crime, price effects of a rule) as JLEO when it is a JLE paper
- A PPE model with no institution it actually describes — comparative statics floating free of any legislature, court, or agency
- Borrowing Organization Science's behavioral/sociological framing for an economics-of-organization venue
- "Law and economics" as a label pasted on an applied-micro paper with no governance or institutional mechanism
- Inventing exemplar JLEO papers, editor names, or fees rather than marking uncertainty
Worked vignette (illustrative)
A team has a clean estimate that a court reform sped up commercial dispute resolution. As a market-outcome paper ("faster courts raise local investment") this is a JLE candidate. The JLEO recast keeps the same data but makes the institutional object the payoff: the reform changed the governance of adjudication (specialized vs. generalist judges), and the paper asks which disputes the specialized structure economizes on — a transaction-cost question about the organization of the courts, not just a growth effect. Same finding, but now the contribution is about institutional design, and the audience that champions it is the JLEO institutional-economics community rather than applied-micro generalists.
Output format
【Journal】The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (JLEO)
【Skill】jleo-topic-selection
【Verdict】pass / revise / reroute (to JLE / JLS / ALER / Org Science / QJPS)
【Institutional object】the organization/institution the paper explains
【Mechanism (one sentence)】TCE / agency / commitment / separation-of-powers / hold-up / ...
【Tradition】transaction-cost-economics / theory-of-the-firm / positive-political-economy
【Sibling boundary】why JLEO and not the nearest neighbor
【Source status】verified URL / 待核实
【Next skill】jleo-literature-positioning
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 13:45
