Individual skill
jpe-literature-positioning
Use when writing or repairing the introduction and related-work framing for a Journal of Political Economy (JPE) manuscript — situating the contribution in the economics literature with author-date citations. Frames positioning and the intro arc; it does not run the empirics or build the model.
Journal-of-Political-Economy-Skills/skills/jpe-literature-positioning/SKILL.md
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# Literature Positioning & Introduction (jpe-literature-positioning)
## When to trigger
- The related-work section reads as an annotated list ("X did A. Y did B.")
- The introduction never states crisply what economics learns from this paper
- Reviewers (or you) cannot tell which literature the paper is contributing to
- You are unsure whether you have engaged the canonical theory the result speaks to
## What JPE wants from positioning
JPE introductions are economic arguments, not literature catalogs. The reader should finish the first three pages knowing: the economic question, the mechanism, what was already known, the precise gap, and what you do about it. Positioning is judged on whether you have placed the paper against the **right** literature and engaged the **theory** the result bears on — not merely the most recent applied papers.
Because JPE is price-theory rooted, a credible intro usually connects to a body of *theory* (the model or mechanism the evidence tests), not only to prior empirical estimates. Often the foundational paper lives in JPE itself — Stigler's "The Economics of Information" (JPE 1961), Becker's "Crime and Punishment" (JPE 1968), or Black and Scholes (JPE 1973). Citing five recent DID papers but ignoring the classic theory your result confirms or overturns — especially the obvious JPE antecedent — is a positioning failure a Chicago referee will name.