ectheory-contribution-framing — independently scanned and version-tracked by SaferSkills.
SaferSkills independently audited ectheory-contribution-framing (Agent Skill) and scored it 100/100 (green). The audit ran 55 deterministic rules across Security, Supply Chain, Maintenance, Transparency, and Community; it found 0 high-severity and 0 lower-severity findings. The full rule-by-rule trace and per-finding evidence are below. Free, methodology-open.
Findings & checks · 0 flagged
Every scanned point with the score it earned and what moved between them.
First recorded scan — no prior version to compare against.
The primary manifest — the file an agent reads to learn what this artifact does.
ET readers reward a clearly stated, general result whose importance is obvious from the statement. Frame the contribution in this order:
robustness failure), stated for a theorist who will recognize it instantly.
(stationary/nonstationary, fixed/growing dimension), with what limiting behavior.
changes practice or further theory.
For an Article, the frame should foreground multiple contributions and the proof program; for a Miscellanea, foreground the single sharp innovation, stated and proved concisely (~15 pages).
From January 2026, ET (Editors-in-Chief Guggenberger, Su, Sun) emphasizes invited papers with discussions and themed special issues — econometric theory for ML/AI, causal inference under complex interference, robust inference and partial identification, high-dimensional and non-standard environments, network/spatial econometrics. If your result speaks to one of these, frame the contribution so that fit is explicit. The biennial Peter C. B. Phillips Award (best paper by a scholar within 6 years of their first PhD) is a recognition program, not a submission track.
The desk screen asks whether the theorem itself is the contribution. Econometric Theory's identity is rigorous limit theory, so the introduction must read as a theorist's claim, not an empiricist's motivation.
| Framing signal | Reads as ET-grade | Desk-reject risk |
|---|---|---|
| Lead sentence | "We establish the limiting distribution of ... under ..." | "We study an important applied problem ..." |
| Object | A theorem with stated mode, rate, limiting law | An estimate, a dataset finding, a software release |
| Generality delta | Named special case collapsing to a known result | "Extends the literature", no assumption change |
| Role of simulation | Illustration that the asymptotics bite | The empirical application carries the paper |
Desk-reject patterns for theory framing: a relabelled corollary of a known limit theorem; a "new estimator" with no distribution theory (rate only); an abstract that never states what is proved.
Suppose the result is an FCLT for a long-run-variance estimator in a mildly explosive autoregression. The ET introduction states the problem (standard estimators turn inconsistent once the root crosses unity), the theorem in words (weak convergence to a Brownian functional under primitive conditions), the generality delta (an earlier paper's i.i.d.-innovation case is the special case recovered), and the consequences (a size-correct explosive-root test as a corollary). Referee pushback maps to fixes: "special case of [prior FCLT]" → a labelled remark naming the weakened assumption and the corollary; "the contribution is the application" → re-lead with the theorem (route ectheory-data-analysis); "overclaimed scope" → narrow to what the assumptions deliver. Confirm exact length limits and themed-issue specifics against the journal's current author guidelines.
【Problem】the econometric inference/limit problem addressed
【Theorem in words】+ scope (assumptions, environment, limit)
【Generality delta】new vs known special cases
【Consequences】what becomes provable/robust/computable
【Frame】Article (multi-contribution) / Miscellanea (one or two)
【Themed fit】direction (if any)
【Next step】ectheory-data-analysis~30 seconds. Free. No account. Every finding cites a rule and a line of evidence.