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imfer-theory-model

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Use when an IMF Economic Review (IMFER) manuscript needs an open-economy model to discipline, interpret, or generate counterfactuals for its evidence — whether a full international-finance model leads the paper or a light framework supports an empirical estimate. Right-sizes the theory to IMFER's policy-relevant bar; it does not design identification (imfer-identification) or run robustness (imfer-robustness).

IMF-Economic-Review-Skills/skills/imfer-theory-model/SKILL.md

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# Theory and Model Craft (imfer-theory-model)

## When to trigger

- A referee asks "what open-economy mechanism rationalizes this cross-country fact?"
- A reduced-form spillover or capital-flow estimate is credible but its welfare meaning is unclear
- You need a counterfactual a regression cannot deliver (an alternative exchange-rate regime, a CFM rule, a debt-restructuring path)
- A structural open-economy / DSGE model leads the paper and you must show it is disciplined by data, not assumption
- You are tempted to bolt a generic NK-SOE model onto an empirical paper and need to right-size it
- A welfare or optimal-policy number is the headline and you must defend its calibration and invariance

## Why theory placement matters at IMFER

IMFER sits between the model-heavy international-finance tradition and the empirical-policy tradition, and the editor will route a paper to referees from whichever side it leads with. That makes the *placement decision* consequential: a strong reduced-form paper that opens with two pages of model derivation invites a theory referee who will judge the model on its own terms; a model-led paper with a thin empirical section invites an empirical referee who will find the discipline lacking. Decide early which tradition the paper belongs to, signal it in the structure, and make the other component genuinely earn its space rather than apologize for it.
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