Topic Selection (jie-topic-selection)

When to trigger

• You are deciding whether a paper belongs at JIE vs a general-interest or domestic-field journal
• The international-economics angle is unclear or bolted-on
• You are unsure your motivation or model is original enough to clear JIE's gate

JIE's scope

JIE publishes work across the whole of international economics — both international trade and international macroeconomics/finance. In-scope topics, per the journal's stated scope, include: trade patterns and commercial policy; international institutions; exchange rates; open-economy macroeconomics; country/regional growth and development; international finance; international pricing; sovereign debt; international factor mobility; spatial economics; and international monetary and fiscal theory and policy. A paper must have a genuine international dimension — a closed-economy labor or public-finance result, however clean, is off-fit unless the cross-border mechanism is central.

The originality gate

JIE accepts both empirical and theoretical work, but only if it is original in its motivation or modelling structure. This is the screen that desk-rejects roughly a quarter of submissions. Ask:

• Motivation originality: does the paper ask a new international-economics question, use new data, or expose a fact the field did not have? (e.g., a new tariff/NTM dataset, firm-level export dynamics, a novel exchange-rate or capital-flow measure.)
• Modelling originality: does the paper build or extend structure in a non-trivial way? (e.g., a new mechanism in an Eaton–Kortum / Melitz trade model, a new ingredient in a sovereign-default or small-open-economy DSGE.)
• A competent re-run of a known design on a new country/period, with neither motivation nor modelling novelty, will not clear the gate.

Two-sided fit check

• Trade side: gravity/structural-trade, commercial policy, GVCs, spatial/economic-geography. Editors include trade specialists (Arkolakis, Eaton, Rodriguez-Clare, Staiger).
• Macro/finance side: exchange rates, open-economy macro, sovereign debt, international pricing, capital flows. Editors include macro/finance specialists (Uribe, Engel).
• Knowing which half you are in tells you which (Co-)Editor to suggest at submission.

Anti-patterns

• A domestic result with a thin "and we use cross-country data" veneer
• A paper whose only novelty is a new country/sample for a settled question
• A structural paper that re-skins an existing model without a new mechanism
• Pitching to JIE as if it were a general-interest top-5 "big lesson" outlet

Scope-fit decision table

Run a candidate through this grid first. The cross-border mechanism must be central, not decorative, and the originality axis (motivation or modelling) must be nameable in one line.

A rightmost-column row means route the paper there before polishing for JIE.

Desk-reject patterns this gate catches

The originality screen turns away a meaningful share of submissions (confirm the current desk-reject figure against the journal's editor pages). Recurring failures: settled-question replication (a known elasticity re-estimated on a fresh panel); bolted-on internationalism (a closed-economy result whose mechanism stays domestic); re-skinned structure (a model recalibrated, not extended); and wrong-venue ambition (a "lesson for macro" pitch reading as general-interest).

Worked vignette (illustrative)

A draft proposes: "We estimate the effect of the 2018–2019 US–China tariff escalation on Chinese firms' export values using customs microdata and a shift-share exposure measure." Walk the gate:

• International dimension: central — commercial policy through firm-level trade. Pass. Scope half: trade.
• Motivation originality: firm-level customs records on a large policy shock is a credible new-data angle — provisionally original, conditional on what existing China-shock and tariff-war papers already report.
• Modelling originality: not claimed; reduced-form. JIE needs originality on one axis, not both.
• Verdict: fits the trade half on motivation originality, if the literature check confirms the firm-level tariff-war margin is not saturated. An illustrative target magnitude — an export decline of a few percentage points per SD of tariff exposure — must be economically, not just statistically, meaningful (numbers illustrative).

Output format

【Topic】(one line)
【Scope half】international trade / international macro-finance
【In-scope】[trade patterns / commercial policy / exchange rates / open-economy / sovereign debt / factor mobility / spatial / ...]
【Originality】motivation-original? modelling-original? [Y/N each + why]
【Suggested editor half】trade / macro-finance
【Verdict】fit / needs sharpening / off-fit
【Next step】jie-literature-positioning

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — trade and international macro/finance data sources to source novel facts
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — scope and editor-roster sources