Referee Strategy & the Fast Review Model (aeri-referee-strategy)

When to trigger

• Before submission, to understand how AER: Insights decides and what referees punish
• Deciding whether the paper can survive a process with no traditional R&R
• Anticipating the one or two objections that would sink a short paper
• Choosing whether to risk AER: Insights vs. a journal that offers multiple rounds

The AER: Insights process (official AEA baseline checked 2026-06-20)

AER: Insights runs single-blind AEA peer review: authors are visible to referees, while referees remain anonymous to authors. It is deliberately fast and decisive:

• First decision is conditional accept or reject — there is no traditional revise-and-resubmit category.
• Conditional accept means the editor expects to publish subject to changes in the decision letter; authors usually get about 8 weeks to return the revision, which is normally not sent back to referees for a second round.
• Reject is reject — there is no iterative path to wear referees down. The screening is sharp: a paper over the word/exhibit cap is returned unreviewed.
• Editor as of 2026: Matthew Gentzkow (lead editor beginning January 2024; founding editor Amy Finkelstein). Aim for AER-level importance in a short, clean package.

Strategic implication: because there is no R&R to fix things later, the paper must be submission-ready and objection-proofed up front. You get essentially one substantive look. A weak design, an overclaim, or a missing key check that an AER R&R would let you repair will instead produce a reject here.

Pre-empt the objections a short paper cannot survive

A short paper has no room to answer everything during review, so answer the decisive objections before submitting:

| Likely objection | Pre-empt before submission | |------------------|----------------------------| | "Not important / not general interest" | Lead with the surprise and the prior overturned (aeri-topic-selection) | | "Already known / incremental" | Confront the closest paper directly (aeri-literature-positioning) | | "Design not credible" | Put the single strongest diagnostic in-text (aeri-identification) | | "Result not robust" | One in-text check + a signposted appendix battery (aeri-robustness) | | "Overclaimed" | Calibrate the claim to exactly what is identified |

Use the venue-neutral reviewer-objection-checklist to stress-test the design by identification strategy before drafting the final version.

Calibrating the bet

• If the single insight is genuinely important and the design is clean, AER: Insights offers a fast, high-prestige outcome.
• If the paper needs several rounds of referee guidance to reach credibility, a journal with R&R may fit better — AER: Insights will likely reject rather than coach.
• A rejected AER: Insights paper is often a strong fit for an AEJ field journal; some flow between AEA journals exists.

Checklist

• ] You understand: conditional accept or reject only, no traditional R&R
• ] The paper is submission-ready — no key check is being deferred to a future round
• ] Each decisive objection above is pre-empted in-text or in the appendix
• ] Importance/general-interest is argued, not assumed
• ] Word/exhibit caps are met (else auto-return) before referees ever see it
• ] A fallback venue (e.g., an AEJ) is identified in case of reject

Anti-patterns

• Submitting a "first draft to get referee feedback" — there is no R&R to iterate on
• Leaving the single most likely objection unaddressed, hoping to fix it in revision
• Assuming importance instead of making the surprise explicit
• Ignoring the cap and getting returned before review
• Treating a reject as the start of a negotiation

Output format

【Process understood】conditional-accept/reject, no R&R, ~8wk conditional window? [Y/N]
【Decisive objections pre-empted】importance / novelty / design / robustness / claims
【Submission-ready】no key check deferred to a nonexistent round? [Y/N]
【Caps met】word + exhibit limits satisfied (no auto-return)? [Y/N]
【Fallback venue】<AEJ or field journal if reject>
【Next step】aeri-submission