JEP articles should be readable by 90 percent or more of the AEA membership and useful to economists not conversant with the author's subspecialty; the journal is "scholarly without relying too heavily on mathematical notation," explaining ideas through economic intuition rather than derivations (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Translation is not simplification of the ideas — it is removing the barriers (notation, jargon, insider shorthand) that hide the ideas from a smart non-specialist.
| Technical draft | JEP move |
|---|---|
| An estimating equation in the body | State what the equation says in words; the design goes to a note or appendix if at all |
| "We instrument X with Z" | "We exploit [the natural experiment] so that the variation in X is plausibly unrelated to [confounder]" |
| A Greek-letter parameter | Name the economic quantity it stands for and give its sign/magnitude in plain units |
| Subfield jargon ("the intensive margin," "MPC," "ATT") | Define on first use in a clause, or replace with plain words where precision allows |
| "Statistically significant at 1%" | A number with a plain sense of precision (see jep-evidence-without-equations) |
| A model's machinery | The economic mechanism — the story of what drives what — first; the formalism is optional scaffolding |
The test is not "could a layperson read this" but "could a non-specialist economist follow the argument and trust it." Keep the rigor of the reasoning; remove the rigor-display. If a precise technical point is essential, state it plainly and put the formal version in a footnote or short appendix — the body must stand on its own.
jep-balance-and-objectivity)A working-paper sentence reads: "We identify β via a shift-share instrument, exploiting Bartik-style variation in local labor demand, and recover an IV estimate that survives the Borusyak–Hull exogeneity diagnostics." The JEP translation: "To separate cause from coincidence, we lean on the fact that some towns were more exposed to a national hiring boom simply because of the industries they happened to host — exposure that had little to do with anything local. Comparing more- and less-exposed towns lets us read off how the boom changed wages." The mechanism and the credibility are now legible to any economist; the estimator name and diagnostics, if needed at all, go to a footnote.
【Jargon/notation removed】[list of terms translated or cut]
【Mechanism in plain words】[one paragraph]
【Equations/proofs relocated】[to note / appendix / cut]
【Non-specialist read test】can a general economist restate it? [Y/N]
【Rigor preserved?】reasoning intact, only display removed? [Y/N]
【Next step】jep-evidence-without-equations