Referee Strategy & the Fast Review Model (aeri-referee-strategy)
When to trigger
- Before submission, to understand how AER: Insights decides and what referees punish
- Deciding whether the paper can survive a process with no traditional R&R
- Anticipating the one or two objections that would sink a short paper
- Choosing whether to risk AER: Insights vs. a journal that offers multiple rounds
The AER: Insights process (official AEA baseline checked 2026-06-20)
AER: Insights runs single-blind AEA peer review: authors are visible to referees, while referees
remain anonymous to authors. It is deliberately fast and decisive:
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First decision is conditional accept or reject — there is no traditional revise-and-resubmit category.
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Conditional accept means the editor expects to publish subject to changes in the decision letter; authors usually get about 8 weeks to return the revision, which is normally not sent back to referees for a second round.
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Reject is reject — there is no iterative path to wear referees down. The screening is sharp: a paper over the word/exhibit cap is returned unreviewed.
- Editor as of 2026: Matthew Gentzkow (lead editor beginning January 2024; founding editor Amy Finkelstein). Aim for AER-level importance in a short, clean package.
Strategic implication: because there is no R&R to fix things later, the paper must be submission-ready and objection-proofed up front. You get essentially one substantive look. A weak design, an overclaim, or a missing key check that an AER R&R would let you repair will instead produce a reject here.
Pre-empt the objections a short paper cannot survive
A short paper has no room to answer everything during review, so answer the decisive objections before submitting:
| Likely objection |
Pre-empt before submission |
| "Not important / not general interest" |
Lead with the surprise and the prior overturned (aeri-topic-selection) |
| "Already known / incremental" |
Confront the closest paper directly (aeri-literature-positioning) |
| "Design not credible" |
Put the single strongest diagnostic in-text (aeri-identification) |
| "Result not robust" |
One in-text check + a signposted appendix battery (aeri-robustness) |
| "Overclaimed" |
Calibrate the claim to exactly what is identified |
Use the venue-neutral reviewer-objection-checklist to stress-test the design by identification strategy before drafting the final version.
Calibrating the bet
- If the single insight is genuinely important and the design is clean, AER: Insights offers a fast, high-prestige outcome.
- If the paper needs several rounds of referee guidance to reach credibility, a journal with R&R may fit better — AER: Insights will likely reject rather than coach.
- A rejected AER: Insights paper is often a strong fit for an AEJ field journal; some flow between AEA journals exists.
Checklist
Anti-patterns
- Submitting a "first draft to get referee feedback" — there is no R&R to iterate on
- Leaving the single most likely objection unaddressed, hoping to fix it in revision
- Assuming importance instead of making the surprise explicit
- Ignoring the cap and getting returned before review
- Treating a reject as the start of a negotiation
Output format
【Process understood】conditional-accept/reject, no R&R, ~8wk conditional window? [Y/N]
【Decisive objections pre-empted】importance / novelty / design / robustness / claims
【Submission-ready】no key check deferred to a nonexistent round? [Y/N]
【Caps met】word + exhibit limits satisfied (no auto-return)? [Y/N]
【Fallback venue】<AEJ or field journal if reject>
【Next step】aeri-submission
