AEJ: Policy Workflow Router (aejpol-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which aejpol- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (AEJ: Policy) — the American Economic Association's quarterly journal for the economic analysis OF policy. AEJ: Policy rewards a paper built around a clear policy question whose answer carries a welfare, cost-benefit, or distributional implication, identified credibly (quasi-experimental / RCT / applied theory) and reproducible to AEA standards. The policy question and its counterfactual are the through-line of every skill below.

Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as AEJ: Policy. Operational tells that you are at AEJ: Policy and not a sibling: review is single-blind through the AEA submission system (the manuscript carries the title/byline/affiliations); JEL codes are required; the AEA Data and Code Availability Policy and the AEA Data Editor run a pre-publication reproducibility check on a deposit in the AEA Data and Code Repository (openICPSR); the bar is broad policy interest + credible causal evidence + a welfare/cost-benefit reading, not a field-public-finance bar (J. Public Economics) or an identification-for-its-own-sake bar (AEJ: Applied). Re-verify volatile specifics (submission fee, editors) on the official AEA pages — official AEA pages checked 2026-06-20.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?"
• A draft needs its current bottleneck diagnosed
• Work is ping-ponging between identification, the policy framing, exhibits, and the response letter
• An AEJ: Policy decision letter arrived and the user needs to switch into revision mode

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
No sharp policy question, or fit vs. JPubE / AEJ:Applied / AER unclear	aejpol-topic-selection
Contribution vs. the policy-evaluation literature is fuzzy or undersold	aejpol-literature-positioning
Causal design (DID / IV / RDD / RCT) for the policy's effect is shaky	aejpol-identification
Need a model/welfare framework to read estimates as a policy effect	aejpol-theory-model
Estimate stability, sensitivity, and threats need stress-testing	aejpol-robustness
Exhibits are dense; significance asterisks still present	aejpol-tables-figures
Prose buries the policy takeaway; abstract/intro do not land	aejpol-writing-style
Data/code deposit, README, AEA Data Editor prep, restricted-data path	aejpol-replication-package
Want to anticipate the referees' objections before submitting	aejpol-referee-strategy
Ready to submit via the AEA system; need a preflight	aejpol-submission
Received an R&R; need a response-letter strategy	aejpol-rebuttal

Default order

1. aejpol-topic-selection — lock the policy question + the welfare/cost-benefit stake
2. aejpol-literature-positioning — stake the contribution vs. the policy-evaluation frontier
3. aejpol-identification — credible quasi-experimental / RCT evaluation of the policy
4. aejpol-theory-model — the framework that maps estimates to a welfare/policy object
5. aejpol-robustness — sensitivity, threats, specification stability
6. aejpol-tables-figures — exhibits without significance asterisks; a policy-relevant headline exhibit
7. aejpol-writing-style — translate estimates into a clear policy takeaway (abstract + intro last)
8. aejpol-replication-package — assemble the AEA-compliant deposit
9. aejpol-referee-strategy — pre-empt the objections referees will raise
10. aejpol-submission — AEA system preflight
11. aejpol-rebuttal — after the R&R

aejpol-writing-style is a late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification/robustness settle.

Anti-patterns

• Treating AEJ: Policy like J. Public Economics (field-only, no broad-interest policy framing) or AEJ: Applied (identification-driven applied micro with no policy question)
• Deferring aejpol-replication-package to acceptance — the AEA Data Editor checks before publication
• Letting aejpol-tables-figures polish exhibits while identification is still moving
• Reporting a clean causal estimate with no welfare / cost-benefit / distributional reading — the AEJ: Policy "so what"

Routing by paper archetype

The bottleneck differs by how the policy is identified. Read the archetype, then enter the chain at the right link.

Archetype	Likely first bottleneck	Enter at
reform / law change (staggered)	TWFE bias; modern DID; pre-trends	aejpol-identification
eligibility threshold / formula	RDD / bunching design + density test	aejpol-identification
field experiment / RCT of a program	estimand + pre-registration + welfare cost	aejpol-topic-selection → aejpol-identification
sufficient-statistics / structural welfare	mapping reduced-form estimate to welfare	aejpol-theory-model

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My estimate of a tax-credit expansion on employment is clean, but a referee says the paper 'has no policy point' and the welfare claim is hand-waved." Two AEJ: Policy pushbacks — no welfare/cost-benefit reading and takeaway not framed as a policy lesson — owned by aejpol-theory-model (the welfare mapping) and aejpol-writing-style (the takeaway). Route to aejpol-theory-model to turn the employment elasticity into a marginal-value-of-public-funds / cost-per-job number, then aejpol-writing-style for the policy sentence.

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:        -> aejpol-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:              -> aejpol-submission
elif anticipating_referees:        -> aejpol-referee-strategy
elif exhibits_or_significance:     -> aejpol-tables-figures
elif estimate_unstable:            -> aejpol-robustness
elif welfare_mapping_missing:      -> aejpol-theory-model
elif identification_shaky:         -> aejpol-identification
elif claim_or_positioning_fuzzy:   -> aejpol-literature-positioning
else:                              -> aejpol-topic-selection