Individual skill
rje-identification-strategy
Use when the identification or estimation strategy is the bottleneck for a RAND Journal of Economics (RJE) industrial-organization manuscript — structural demand/supply, entry and dynamic games, auctions, or reduced-form designs off mergers and regulation. Stress-tests the design to the IO-flagship bar before tables are drafted.
RAND-Journal-of-Economics-Skills/skills/rje-identification-strategy/SKILL.md
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# Identification Strategy (rje-identification-strategy)
## When to trigger
- Your structural model's identification (instruments, functional form, moments) is unargued
- A merger/regulation evaluation rests on TWFE over staggered timing with no modern estimator
- An IV's first stage or exclusion restriction is weak in an IO setting
- You are unsure your design clears the RJE industrial-organization bar
## The RJE identification bar
RJE is the **flagship industrial-organization journal**, so identification is judged by IO norms: the **economic model and the source of identifying variation must be explicit**, and counterfactuals must be disciplined by the model and the data. Both **structural** and **reduced-form** work is welcomed — there is no preference for one, but each carries field-specific obligations.
## Branch A: Structural demand (BLP-style)