JUE Workflow Router (jue-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which jue- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the Journal of Urban Economics (JUE) — the Elsevier field flagship for urban & regional economics, founded in 1974 by Edwin Mills and described as "the premier journal in the field." JUE rewards papers whose question is genuinely spatial: agglomeration economies, housing supply & real estate, local labor markets, commuting & transportation, land use & zoning, local public finance & Tiebout sorting, neighborhood effects, spatial sorting, urban growth, and place-based policy. The bar is a credible spatial identification married to a clear urban mechanism — not just a national-level result run on geographic data.

Operational tells that you are at JUE and not a sibling: single-anonymized (single-blind) review via Editorial Manager; a US$100 nonrefundable submission fee paid during submission (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准); a mandatory replication policy (data + code deposited to a major repository at acceptance, before publication); a short-paper track, JUE: Insights (≤6,000 words, ≤5 exhibits); co-editors-in-chief Nathaniel Baum-Snow (Toronto) and Kristian Behrens (UQÀM) (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Re-verify volatile specifics on the official Elsevier/ScienceDirect pages.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?" on a JUE-bound paper
• A draft needs its current spatial-economics bottleneck diagnosed
• Work is ping-ponging between framing, identification, exhibits (maps!), and the response letter
• A JUE decision letter arrived and the user must switch into revision mode
• The team is deciding between JUE and a sibling (RSUE, JREconomics, JEG, JPubE)

Routing table

Default order

jue-topic-selection → jue-literature-positioning → jue-identification → jue-theory-model → jue-robustness → jue-tables-figures → jue-writing-style → jue-replication-package → jue-referee-strategy → jue-submission → jue-rebuttal

jue-writing-style is late-stage polish — do not rewrite the intro before identification and the spatial mechanism settle. Start jue-replication-package early if data is geocoded or restricted; the deposit is harder than it looks.

Routing by paper archetype

JUE spans several spatial sub-fields and the binding constraint differs by archetype. Read the archetype, then enter the chain at the right link.

How JUE differs from its siblings (keep this straight while routing)

• RSUE (Regional Science & Urban Economics, Elsevier) — leans more methodological / regional-science; JUE leads with the economics, not the spatial method.
• Journal of Regional Science — broader regional-science scope; JUE is the urban-economics field flagship.
• JEG (Journal of Economic Geography, OUP) — economic-geography framing (clusters, evolutionary geography), non-Elsevier; JUE is spatial-equilibrium urban economics.
• JPubE (Journal of Public Economics) — the tax/spending design leads; at JUE the spatial reallocation and capitalization lead.
• AEJ: Applied — rewards the causal design alone; JUE additionally requires a load-bearing urban mechanism.

Anti-patterns

• Treating JUE as interchangeable with RSUE (more methods/regional-science), Journal of Regional Science, JEG (econ-geography, OUP), or JPubE (a place-based result is not automatically a public-finance paper)
• Polishing exhibits or prose while the spatial identification is still moving
• Deferring the replication folder to acceptance when the data is geocoded/restricted
• A national-level result dressed in geographic data with no urban mechanism

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My paper shows a new rail line raised nearby house prices, but a referee says the price jump could be sorting of richer households into the corridor, and the control areas may be contaminated by displaced demand." That is two distinct JUE pushbacks — spatial sorting/selection and SUTVA/spillover contamination of controls — both owned by jue-identification (design) and jue-robustness (spatial-spillover sensitivity, donut controls). Route to jue-identification first; only once the capitalization estimate is defended (say it settles at 4.5%, illustrative) return to jue-tables-figures for the map and jue-rebuttal.

Two cross-cutting threads to keep alive throughout

• Spatial inference is not a single stage — it surfaces in jue-identification (Conley/spatial-cluster SEs), jue-robustness (cutoff sensitivity), and jue-tables-figures (reporting). Do not treat it as a one-time fix.
• The replication path for geocoded/restricted data touches jue-topic-selection (feasibility), jue-replication-package (deposit), and jue-submission (cover-letter exemption). Decide it early, not at acceptance.

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:          -> jue-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:                -> jue-submission
elif anticipating_referees:          -> jue-referee-strategy
elif data_is_geocoded_or_restricted: -> jue-replication-package
elif exhibits_have_no_map:           -> jue-tables-figures
elif spatial_robustness_open:        -> jue-robustness
elif need_spatial_model:             -> jue-theory-model
elif identification_shaky:           -> jue-identification
elif claim_or_positioning_fuzzy:     -> jue-literature-positioning
else:                                -> jue-topic-selection