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jpe-topic-selection
Use when scoping or framing a research question for a Journal of Political Economy (JPE) manuscript and you need to test whether it is "JPE-shaped" — i.e., a mechanism-driven economic question, not an atheoretical correlation. Diagnoses fit and frames the contribution; it does not design the empirics.
Journal-of-Political-Economy-Skills/skills/jpe-topic-selection/SKILL.md
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# Topic Selection & Fit (jpe-topic-selection)
## When to trigger
- You have data or a result but not yet a sharp economic question
- You are unsure whether the paper belongs at JPE, a field journal, or a methods journal
- The pitch is "X is correlated with Y" with no mechanism or model behind it
- You are deciding between JPE proper and the **2023-launched companion journals** (JPE Microeconomics, lead editor John List; JPE Macroeconomics, lead editor Greg Kaplan)
## The JPE fit test
JPE (founded 1892, edited at the University of Chicago; lead editor Esteban Rossi-Hansberg) publishes the full breadth of economics, but with a premium on **rigorous economic reasoning** and a **price-theoretic / mechanism-driven** angle — the Chicago lineage of Becker's "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach" (JPE 1968) and Black and Scholes's "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities" (JPE 1973). Score the idea against these five questions before committing:
1. **Mechanism** — Can you state the economic mechanism in one sentence, and does the paper test *that mechanism* (not just a net effect)?