Use when systematically gathering, reading, and synthesizing a body of economic research for an Annual Review of Economics (ARE) review — coverage discipline and avoiding citation gaps. Builds the evidence corpus and synthesis notes; it does not impose the analytical spine (arecon-organizing-framework) or appraise study credibility (arecon-evidence-standards).
SkillScore91Maintained
Automatic
◆Research pack
Last verified 8/15/2026
What it changes
Passed 20 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 9 of 22 without it.
Without skill41%
With skill91%
Checks it passed that the model alone missed
Response contains the bracketed tag 【Seed set】.
Response contains the bracketed tag 【Next step】.
Response features the bracketed tag 【Coverage risks】.
and 18 more in the full report
11 fixed9 passed either way2 still failing0 broke
Pass-rate lift
+50 pp
Tokens
+24%
Agent turns
0%
Response time
-21%
Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/15/2026v120 of 22 cases passed with skill
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
See it in action
One of 11 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
1 of 11
Prompt
Once our literature evidence matrix is fully populated with study attributes, credibility appraisals, and tensions, what is the immediate next workflow step to transition from literature search to writing?
What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked
Without skill
With skill
Response identifies arecon-organizing-framework as the next step.
Missed
Passed
case-16 · 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.md70 linessingle file
Literature Synthesis (arecon-literature-synthesis)
When to trigger
The invitation is secured and it is time to read the field thoroughly
Reading feels unsystematic; you fear missing important contributions an adjacent economist would expect
You have many papers but no way to weigh, compare, or reconcile their findings
A Committee referee is likely to ask "why did you omit X / the Y literature?"
Coverage discipline: read the field, not a convenience sample
An ARE review's credibility rests on the reader's belief that you read everything that matters — and ARE referees are often the very authors whose work is being weighed, so gaps are noticed. Build coverage systematically rather than from memory:
Seed set. Start from the pitch's key references and the field's canonical pieces.
Forward + backward snowball. Backward: every paper's reference list. Forward: who cites the seeds (Google Scholar / Scopus). Iterate until new searches stop turning up unseen important work (saturation).
Keyword + JEL-code sweep. Search EconLit / RePEc / NBER / SSRN by topic keywords and by the relevant JEL classification codes, to catch work indexed under adjacent labels.
Working papers + adjacent fields. A current review must include recent working papers (the frontier) and the bordering literatures the field draws on, or referees flag staleness and siloing. ARE's annual cadence makes frontier coverage especially visible — a review that stops at last year's published work reads as dated on arrival.
Saturation log. Record when each search stops yielding new must-cite work — this is your evidence of comprehensiveness for the balance audit in arecon-evidence-standards.
From reading to synthesis (not summary)
Summarizing is restating each paper; synthesizing is making the papers talk to each other. Maintain an evidence matrix as you read:
Column
What to capture
Study
author–year, the result you will cite it for
Question/estimand
exactly what it measures (so non-comparable studies are not pooled)
Method/data
design and sample (so you can weight credibility)
Finding
direction + magnitude (for who-found-what tables)
Credibility
identification strength, sample, robustness — your appraisal, since ARE runs no new estimates
Tension
which other studies it agrees/conflicts with, and why
This matrix is the raw material for the organizing framework, the summary tables, and the even-handed treatment of controversies. Crucially, you appraise primary studies — you are the field's referee-of-record for adjacent readers — you do not re-estimate them.
Synthesis depth vs. ARE's accessibility mandate
Unlike a Handbook chapter (exhaustive) or a JEL survey (deeper and longer), an ARE review must stay readable by an outsider in ~25–40 pages (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). So the matrix serves a second purpose: it lets you cite the confirmatory tier in clusters while reserving prose for the field-defining work. Read exhaustively; write selectively. Coverage is proven by the citation set; accessibility is exercised in the prose.