Topic Selection (jeg-topic-selection)

When to trigger

• Before committing months to a project you hope to send to JEG
• When unsure whether your question is "growth enough" for a specialist outlet
• When a referee or colleague has said the paper "isn't really about growth"

The JEG scope gate

JEG publishes theoretical and empirical research in economic growth and dynamic macroeconomics. A paper fits when the dependent phenomenon is long-run growth, development, or the dynamics that drive them, not when growth is a side outcome. In-scope cores include:

• Neoclassical and endogenous growth (R&D, ideas, increasing returns)
• Human capital accumulation, education, and skill formation
• Fertility, the demographic transition, and unified growth theory
• Trade and growth; financial development and growth
• Migration, technological change, and structural transformation
• The political economy of growth and institutions; OLG models

Calibrate ambition to a specialist (not general-interest) outlet

JEG does not require a paper to interest all of economics, but it does demand a first-order growth question answered with either real theoretical novelty or credible empirics. Ask:

• Is the question about a growth mechanism, not a within-field micro estimate that merely mentions growth?
• Does it speak to a live debate in the growth literature (e.g., the sources of cross-country income differences, the demographic transition, the institutions-vs-geography-vs-human-capital triangle)?
• Theory papers: is there a new mechanism, a more general result, or a resolution of a tension in existing growth models — not a marginal parameterization?
• Empirical papers: is the variation informative about a growth-relevant causal channel, and is the sample (often cross-country or long-run panel) suited to the claim?

Decision aids

• Could the abstract's main sentence start "We show that [growth/development outcome] is driven by..."? If not, the growth content may be incidental.
• Is the natural home a field growth/development outlet rather than a general-interest top-5? JEG sits precisely in that specialist slot — lean into the growth mechanism.

Anti-patterns

• Pitching a labor/finance/IO paper that touches GDP as a "growth" paper.
• A theory paper that re-derives a known steady state with a cosmetic tweak.
• A cross-country regression with no defensible growth mechanism behind the correlation.
• Assuming general-interest novelty is required — it is not; growth-field first-order-ness is.

Borderline-fit triage

Worked vignette — stress-testing a deep-determinants idea

Idea: "Regions with historical irrigation agriculture developed more hierarchical institutions and grow slower today." Gate checks (illustrative): the dependent phenomenon is comparative development — pass. Live debate — joins the geography-versus-institutions exchange — pass. Mechanism — the chain irrigation → coordination demands → state centralization → modern factor allocation must be evidenced, not narrated; plan intermediate-outcome data now. Feasibility — requires geocoded historical agronomy data plus a credible plan for Conley inference and an exclusion-restriction defense before the first regression is run. Verdict: strong fit conditional on the mechanism evidence — schedule that evidence as a main exhibit from day one, or the project decays into another unpublishable long-run correlation.

Output format

【Question】one sentence (growth/dynamic-macro phenomenon as the object)
【In-scope core】endogenous growth / human capital / fertility / trade / institutions / ...
【Paper type】theory / empirical / quantitative
【First-order?】yes/no + the debate it joins
【Verdict】strong fit / reframe / wrong venue
【Next skill】jeg-literature-positioning