Individual skill
qje-referee-strategy
Use when war-gaming likely referee objections for a Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) manuscript before submitting, to close gaps pre-emptively given QJE's ~2-week desk screen and ~1-4% acceptance. Anticipates referee reports; it does not write the post-decision response letter (see qje-rebuttal).
Quarterly-Journal-of-Economics-Skills/skills/qje-referee-strategy/SKILL.md
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# Referee Strategy (qje-referee-strategy)
## When to trigger
- The paper is nearly submission-ready and you want to stress-test it adversarially
- You suspect a specific weakness a referee will seize on
- You are choosing what to put in the body vs. the appendix to forestall objections
- You want to draft suggested/excluded referees and a strategic cover note
## The QJE refereeing reality
QJE is **the fastest top-5 journal at desk** — its five Harvard-based Editors desk-decide in roughly **two weeks** and desk-reject a clear majority (commonly cited around 60%+), with an unconditional acceptance rate of only **~1-4%**. Review is **double-blind**, so you cannot tailor to a known referee; you must satisfy *the toughest plausible expert*. Two consequences: (1) the paper has to survive a fast, skim-level editor screen before any referee sees it, so the big idea and clean identification must be visible up front; (2) for papers that survive, QJE grants few rounds with demanding referees, so you usually get *one* substantive shot. Anticipate the report you would write if you were the toughest expert in your subfield, and answer it in advance.
## Map the three referee archetypes