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jel-organizing-framework

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Use when imposing an analytical structure or taxonomy on a literature for a Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) survey — the "spine" that turns a reading list into an argument about the field. Designs the framework; it does not gather the literature (jel-literature-synthesis) or judge balance (jel-comprehensiveness-and-balance).

Journal-of-Economic-Literature-Skills/skills/jel-organizing-framework/SKILL.md

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# Organizing Framework — the Survey's Spine (jel-organizing-framework)

## When to trigger

- The evidence matrix is built but the draft would read like a list of papers
- Sections are named after topics ("Empirical studies", "Theoretical work") rather than ideas
- A reader could not predict what comes next or why papers are grouped as they are
- You cannot state in one sentence the *argument* the survey makes about the field

## Why the spine is the whole game at JEL

The single most-cited reason JEL surveys fail is that they are **annotated bibliographies**: paper-after-paper summaries with no organizing idea. A great JEL survey **imposes a structure the field did not have** — a taxonomy, a unifying framework, a sequence of questions, or a simple model — that makes scattered work legible. The framework is the contribution; the citations are the evidence. Choose the spine deliberately:

| Spine type | Organizes the field by | Best when |
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