aer-paper-bodylisted

# AER Paper Body ## Overview The introduction decides whether the editor sends the paper out; the **body sections decide what the referees write**. Referees live in Data, Empirical Strategy, and Results, checking that the estimand is defined, the assumption stated, the magnitudes interpreted, and the prose matched to the tables. Draft the body **before** the introduction — the introduction summarizes a paper that already exists, and writing it first produces promises the body fails to keep. ## When to Use - The empirics are stable (after `aer-identification` and `aer-robustness`) and the manuscript needs full section drafts - A results section reads like a table walk-through ("Column 1 shows...") and needs narration surgery - A referee called the paper "hard to follow," "under-interpreted," or "reads like a report" - Coefficients are reported but never converted into economic magnitudes - The conclusion restates the abstract and needs to do real work ## Canonical Section Architecture A full-length empirical AER paper, after the unlabeled introduction: ``` I. Background (or: Institutional Setting; Policy Context) II. Data (sources, sample construction, measurement, summary stats) III. Empirical Strategy (estimand, equation, identifying assumption, inference) IV. Results (main estimates, dynamics, robustness pointers) V. Mechanisms (or: Heterogeneity and Mechanisms; Interpretation) VI. Conclusion ``` Variants: a **conceptual framework** goes