---
name: aejpol-topic-selection
description: Use when deciding whether a project fits AEJ: Economic Policy rather than J. Public Economics, AEJ: Applied, or AER, and when sharpening the policy question and its welfare stake for an AEJ: Economic Policy manuscript. Frames fit and the policy-question-first contribution; it does not design the identification or run estimation.
---

# Topic Selection & Policy-Question Fit (aejpol-topic-selection)

## When to trigger

- You have a clean empirical result but are unsure it is "an AEJ: Policy paper"
- The project could plausibly go to J. Public Economics, AEJ: Applied, or AER and you must pick
- A referee or colleague says the question is "narrow," "not a policy paper," or "so what?"
- You can state a finding but not yet a **policy question** with a **welfare / cost-benefit / distributional** stake

## The AEJ: Policy bar — lead with the policy question

AEJ: Policy publishes the **economic analysis OF policy**: a paper is built around a **policy question** ("should this tax / mandate / subsidy / regulation exist, expand, or change, and at what welfare cost?") whose answer carries a **welfare, cost-benefit, or distributional** implication of **broad interest** to the AEA readership. Two halves must both be present from the first page:

1. **A real policy lever.** A specific instrument someone could pull — a credit, a tax schedule, an eligibility rule, an emissions standard, a transfer, a mandate, an enforcement regime. Not just "an interesting natural experiment."
2. **A counterfactual / welfare reading.** What changes, for whom, and is it worth it — a cost-benefit ratio, a marginal-value-of-public-funds (MVPF), an incidence/distributional split, or a calibrated welfare number. A clean estimate with no policy reading is off-fit.

### Policy areas in scope
Public economics & taxation · environmental & energy · health · education · labor & social insurance · regulation & antitrust · development policy · political economy of policy. Empirical (quasi-experimental / RCT) **and** applied-theory work both fit — provided the policy question and welfare relevance are explicit.

### Fit decision table (route by the dominant pull)

| If the paper is mainly… | It belongs at… | Tell |
|---|---|---|
| broad-interest policy question + credible causal evidence + welfare reading | **AEJ: Policy** | the policy lesson is the headline |
| a deep field-public-finance contribution for specialists | **J. Public Economics** | broad readership would not follow the "so what" |
| identification-driven applied micro with no policy lever / welfare claim | **AEJ: Applied** | the natural experiment, not a policy, is the point |
| a first-order, general-interest result warranting top-5 length | **AER** | the contribution is larger and longer than a field-leading policy paper |

## Checklist

- [ ] The policy lever is named in one sentence (instrument + who is affected)
- [ ] The policy question is stated as a question with a welfare/cost-benefit/distributional stake
- [ ] The counterfactual is concrete (what the policy is compared against)
- [ ] Broad-interest test passed: a non-specialist AEA reader sees why it matters
- [ ] Sibling check done (not JPubE field-only / not AEJ:Applied no-policy / not AER-scale)
- [ ] You can name the welfare object you will eventually report (MVPF, cost-per-X, incidence)

## Anti-patterns

- "We exploit a clean natural experiment" with **no policy the experiment evaluates** (reads as AEJ: Applied)
- A field-public-finance result with no broad-interest framing (reads as J. Public Economics)
- A descriptive or correlational "policy-relevant" topic with no credible counterfactual
- Promising a welfare/cost-benefit reading you have no way to compute
- Leading with the dataset or method instead of the policy question

## Three questions that decide fit fast

Before investing in a draft, answer these in one sentence each; a "no" or "I can't" on any is a fit problem:
1. **The lever test** — can you name the instrument a decision-maker would pull? (If it is "a shock," not a policy, lean AEJ: Applied.)
2. **The welfare test** — can you name the welfare object you will report (MVPF, cost-per-X, incidence)? (If not, the policy "so what" is missing.)
3. **The broad-interest test** — would a non-specialist AEA reader, not just the field, care about the answer? (If only the field cares, lean JPubE.)

## Worked vignette (illustrative)

A draft estimates that a state's expansion of a childcare subsidy raised maternal employment. As "we find subsidy → employment" it is a clean applied-micro result (AEJ: Applied). Reframed for AEJ: Policy: *"Is expanding the childcare subsidy a cost-effective way to raise maternal labor supply, and who bears the cost?"* — now the employment elasticity feeds a **cost-per-additional-worker** and an **incidence** split across income groups (illustrative), and the paper has a policy lever, a counterfactual, and a welfare reading.

## Referee pushback mapped to the fix

- *"Better suited to a field journal."* → Sharpen the broad-interest framing; lead with the policy lesson, not the institutional detail.
- *"This is just a clean natural experiment."* → Name the policy the experiment evaluates and the welfare object; if there is none, reconsider the target.
- *"Interesting but so what for policy?"* → Add the cost-benefit / incidence reading to the abstract, not the conclusion.

## Output format

```
【Policy lever】instrument + affected population (one sentence)
【Policy question】stated as a question with a welfare/cost-benefit/distributional stake
【Counterfactual】what the policy is compared against
【Welfare object to report】MVPF / cost-per-X / incidence / calibrated welfare
【Fit verdict】AEJ: Policy vs JPubE / AEJ:Applied / AER + one-line reason
【Next step】aejpol-literature-positioning
```