Literature Positioning (jme-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• The contribution relative to prior monetary/macro work is fuzzy or oversold
• Reviewers might say "this is already known" or "this is a known DSGE result"
• The related-work section reads as a survey instead of a stake in the ground
• You are unsure which strands (policy transmission, frictions, expectations) you build on and beat

How JME referees read the literature

JME draws on overlapping macro literatures: monetary-policy transmission (the interest-rate, credit, and risk-taking channels), New Keynesian / DSGE modeling, financial intermediation and frictions (Bernanke–Gertler–Gilchrist-style accelerators, Gertler–Kiyotaki banking), business cycles and growth, fiscal–monetary interactions, and expectations / information (rational, sticky, and behavioral). With single anonymized review (referees know who you are) and a minimum of two reviewers, you should assume your referees are specialists in exactly the strand you extend — so cite the immediate frontier precisely and do not paper over the closest competitor.

Because JME enforces a 40-page limit on accepted papers, the literature discussion must be lean: place the contribution in two or three sentences, not a multi-page tour. Journal titles in the reference list are spelled out in full (not abbreviated), references are author-date, and the reference list sits after appendices but before tables and figures — so positioning lives in the prose, not in a long bibliography.

Positioning moves

• Name the closest paper(s) and state in one sentence what you add (a new shock, a new mechanism, a new moment matched, a new policy counterfactual).
• Distinguish empirical vs. theoretical contribution explicitly — JME values both, but a reviewer wants to know which lever you are pulling.
• Pre-empt "already known": if a result resembles a known DSGE prediction, say precisely what is novel (new data, relaxed assumption, quantitative magnitude, identification).
• Tie to policy where relevant — a positioning that connects to a live central-banking or fiscal question reads as first-order.

Checklist

• The 2-3 closest papers named, with the marginal contribution stated in one sentence each
• Empirical and theoretical contributions separated
• The "already known" objection pre-empted
• References are author-date, journal titles spelled out in full
• No standalone survey; positioning is lean enough for the 40-page cap

Positioning pass for Journal of Monetary Economics

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the main macro object, the identifying variation, and the policy-relevant counterfactual; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: macro and monetary economists who expect the shock, mechanism, and policy margin to be visible early.

• Do the pass: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against JIE for open-economy trade/finance emphasis, RED for dynamic macro theory, AEJ Macro for broader field positioning; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Strand(s)】policy transmission / DSGE / intermediation / expectations / ...
【Closest prior work】[paper → what we add]
【Empirical contribution】one line
【Theoretical contribution】one line
【"Already known?" rebuttal】one line
【Next step】jme-contribution-framing