Use when calibrating expectations for the fast, decisive American Economic Review: Insights (AER: Insights) review process — conditional-accept-or-reject decisions, the single-round model, and pre-empting the objections a short paper cannot afford. Explains the process and stress-tests the paper; it does not write the response letter (see aeri-rebuttal).
SkillScore86Maintained
Automatic
◆Research pack
Last verified 8/15/2026
What it changes
Passed 19 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 12 of 22 without it.
Without skill55%
With skill86%
Checks it passed that the model alone missed
Identifies Matthew Gentzkow as the lead editor.
Specifies a conditional accept revision window of approximately 8 weeks.
States that decision outcomes are restricted to conditional accept or reject.
and 5 more in the full report
7 fixed12 passed either way3 still failing0 broke
Pass-rate lift
+32 pp
Tokens
+16%
Agent turns
0%
Response time
-39%
Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/15/2026v119 of 22 cases passed with skill
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
See it in action
One of 7 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
1 of 7
Prompt
We are preparing a submission to AER: Insights and need to verify the editorial and review configuration. Our paper is currently double-blinded, and we listed Amy Finkelstein as current lead editor. Should we submit as double-blind?
What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked
Without skill
With skill
States that review at AER: Insights is single-blind with author identity visible to referees.
Passed
Passed
Identifies Matthew Gentzkow as the lead editor.
Missed
Passed
case-08 · gemini-3.6-flash · 8/15/2026 · answers are capped and redacted
What's inside
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
SKILL.md68 linessingle file
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.
Use when anticipating the objections referees and coeditors will raise on an American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics (AEJ: Macro) manuscript, and calibrating desk-reject and revision odds, before submission. Pre-empts pushback and plans the review; it does not draft the post-decision response letter (use aejmac-rebuttal).