journal-of-environmental-economics-and-management

Journal positioning

JEEM is the field flagship for environmental and resource economics, associated with the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (the AERE). It publishes the most consequential work on valuation, externalities, climate and energy policy, and regulation, judged on whether the question and method advance the field. The readership is environmental and resource economists, so a paper must combine a substantive environmental question with credible identification, valuation, or structural modeling.

This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the Elsevier site and the editorial submission system.

When to trigger

• The author names JEEM as the target venue, or wants the environmental/resource-economics field flagship.
• An environmental-economics paper has credible identification or valuation but is narrower than a top-5 result.
• An energy, climate, or regulation paper needs re-framing so the contribution reads as environmental economics — externalities, valuation, policy — rather than engineering or pure policy.
• The author needs JEEM's desk-reject risks and a credible environmental/resource alternative list.

Scope & topic fit

• Non-market valuation: revealed and stated preference, hedonics, recreation demand, ecosystem services.
• Externalities and pollution: emissions, abatement, environmental health, and damages.
• Climate and energy economics: climate policy, energy demand and markets, technology adoption.
• Environmental regulation and policy instruments: taxes, permits, standards, and their evaluation; natural-resource and fisheries/forestry economics.

Method & evidence bar

• Identification is the filter for empirical work: experiments, quasi-experiments, DiD, IV, and RDD must be credible with threats pre-empted.
• Valuation studies must follow current best practice (defensible survey/experimental design for stated preference, sound econometrics for revealed preference) and address standard biases.
• Structural and integrated-assessment models must identify parameters transparently and justify counterfactuals and welfare/damage statements.
• The contribution is a credible estimate of value, externality, or policy effect with an economic mechanism, not a significant coefficient on an environmental outcome.

Structure & house style

• The introduction states the environmental question, the data or model, the identification/valuation strategy, and the headline result early, and says why it matters for environmental policy.
• Position against the relevant environmental-economics literature; "first to estimate X for resource/region Y" is not a contribution without an advance.
• Uses an unstructured abstract and JEL codes; an online appendix carries robustness, survey instruments, and modeling detail.
• Exhibits report interpretable magnitudes (willingness-to-pay, marginal damages, policy costs/benefits) with transparent identification.

Official-submission checklist

• Before giving submission-ready advice, read ../../resources/source-basis.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked.
• Search the live site for "Journal of Environmental Economics and Management guide for authors / submission guidelines" and follow the current Elsevier version.
• Re-check formatting, abstract/JEL requirements, anonymization, and figure/table standards on the submission system.
• Re-check the current data and code availability / replication policy and, for stated-preference work, survey-instrument and ethics requirements.
• If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.

Pre-submission self-check

• One sentence stating why this result matters for valuation, externalities, or environmental policy.
• The contribution is stated as a credible value/externality/policy estimate + mechanism, not as statistical significance.
• The introduction positions the paper against the current environmental-economics frontier on this question.
• Identification or valuation design meets current best practice; standard biases are addressed.
• Data, code, survey instruments, and robustness appendix are ready for the official policy.

Common desk-reject triggers

• An environmental correlation with endogeneity and no credible identification.
• A stated-preference study that ignores known design biases or lacks incentive compatibility.
• "First to study X for resource/region Y" with no economic mechanism or methodological advance.
• A paper that is really natural science / engineering / pure policy with no economics contribution.

Re-routing decision

• General-interest at the top → american-economic-review; broad applied micro → the AEA applied outlet or review-of-economics-and-statistics.
• Energy/climate with strong policy-evaluation identification → journal-of-public-economics; spatial/urban environmental questions → journal-of-urban-economics.
• Health-and-pollution core → journal-of-health-economics; technically heavy structure/econometrics → international-economic-review or journal-of-applied-econometrics; broad general field → european-economic-review.

Output format

[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
[Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics>
[Method/evidence] <does the identification / valuation clear JEEM's field bar?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection>
[Official items to re-check] <submission system / JEL / data-code policy / survey instruments / exhibits>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>