aer-topic-selection

# AER Topic Selection ## Overview The single most expensive mistake in top-5 economics is writing a polished manuscript around a contribution that was always going to be desk-rejected. This skill is the **pre-mortem**: stress-test the idea, the audience, and the venue *before* the introduction is drafted. AER accepts only a small share of submissions — on the order of **6–8%** historically (Card and DellaVigna 2013, *Nine Facts about Top Journals*), and recent *Reports of the Editor* put the rate lower still. A large fraction of submissions are desk-rejected before ever reaching a referee; for *AER: Insights*, founding editor Amy Finkelstein has reported desk-rejecting "roughly 45%" of submissions. Either way, much of a paper's survival probability is determined before the first paragraph is written. ## When to Use - A new project just started and the contribution sentence cannot be written in one line - The user is undecided between submitting to AER, AER: Insights, or an AEJ - A prior submission was desk-rejected and the user wants to diagnose whether the topic itself was the problem - The paper "feels solid" but no senior colleague has agreed to send it to AER ## The Top-5 Bar A paper clears the top-5 bar if and only if **all four** are true: 1. **Cross-subfield interest.** A labor economist's paper must matter to public, macro, IO, and development economists. Not the median person — the editor. If you cannot name three subfields that would cite it, it is an AEJ pa...