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restat-topic-selection

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Use when deciding whether an applied-economics project fits The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) rather than AER / AEJ:Applied / J. Econometrics / a field journal, and sharpening the question to REStat's empirical-and-measurement bar. Decides venue fit and frames the question; it does not run the analysis.

Review-of-Economics-and-Statistics-Skills/skills/restat-topic-selection/SKILL.md

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# Topic Selection & Venue Fit (restat-topic-selection)

## When to trigger

- A project is between venues: REStat vs AER / AEJ:Applied vs *J. Econometrics* vs a field journal
- The question is interesting but you cannot say why it belongs at REStat specifically
- The contribution is a method but you are unsure REStat (applied, not methods-development) is the home
- You have a clean dataset / measurement advance and need to frame it as a REStat question

## The REStat fit bar

REStat publishes **applied economics and applied econometrics** with a long **measurement tradition**: it wants a substantive economic question answered with **credible identification** *or* a **careful measurement / data contribution** that moves an applied literature. It is **empirical-first** and broad across fields (labor, public, development, trade, IO, health, environment, urban, macro-empirics), wider than a field journal but more specialized than AER. Two REStat sweet spots that distinguish it from siblings: (1) a **clean causal estimate** of a parameter an applied literature cares about; (2) a **measurement or methods-applied** advance — a new index, a better-measured construct, a corrected bias, an estimator put to serious applied use — where the *application*, not the theorem, is the point.

## Fit decision table
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