American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

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Citation “American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.” , vol. 107, no. 5, May 2017, pp. 719–25.

As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.107.5.719

Publisher American Economic Association

Version Final published version

Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/116001

Terms of Use Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 2017, 107(5): 719–725 https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.107.5.719

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

The American Economic Journal: Applied Table 1—Manuscripts Submitted and Published, Economics AEJ Applied was launched by the 2007–2016 ( ) American Economic Association in July 2007, Previously submitted and has experienced since then a steady increase to the AER in submissions. Year Submitted Published Submitted Published The AEJ Applied publishes papers covering a broad range of topics in applied econom- 2007 69 0 5 — 2008 223 0 36 — ics, with a focus on empirical microeconomic 2009 345 34 36 — issues. In particular, it covers labor economics, 2010 344 40 40 — development , health, educa- 2011 384 36 33 — tion, demography, empirical corporate finance, 2012 471 40 53 — empirical studies of trade and industrial orga- 2013 525 38 44 — 2014 498 40 38 6 nization, and empirical behavioral economics. 2015 559 35 39 5 Table 6 gives the distribution of fields covered 2016 643 37 52 11 by the papers published in 2016. It reflects the broad diversity of papers received. Development, Notes: Submissions to the AEJ Applied for each year include all new submissions from November 1 of the previous year labor, and health and education are the main through October 31 of the stated year. Publications for 2009 topics as initially envisioned . The papers have ( ) include the January and October issues. Publications for all different empirical approaches from descriptive years include the January, April, July, and October issues. studies and lab experiments to structural( estima- tion , and address a broad array of topics. They are united) by the fact that they make a substan- the decision to summarily reject papers, choice tive and empirical i.e., not purely methodolog- of referees, and the ultimate disposition of the ical contribution to( important economic issues. paper, rests with the person to whom the man- As) shown in Table 1, the number of first sub- uscript has been assigned. However, this person missions is a record 643 for the year 2016. consults with at least one more member of the This represents a 15 percent increase from editorial team before reaching a “revise and 2015. We still have four coeditors, and for now resubmit” decision, and generally in marginal can manage with this team. The impact factor is cases as well. The decision letter specifies which also at its highest yet: at 4.038 cites per paper coeditor was consulted, if one was. The journal published in the previous year, we are number 8 has a policy of avoiding conflicts of interest, and this year, just ahead of the American Economic papers are not assigned to an editor if the author Review and all the other AEJ journals ! . is a colleague, coauthor, or recent student. ( ) As of 2011, AEJ Applied no longer follows Editorial Process the double-blind process previously followed by the AEA journals. As other AEA journals do, Manuscripts submitted to the AEJ Applied AEJ Applied discloses the author’s name to ref- are handled by an editor , until erees. As before, referee names are not revealed December 2016 and three coeditors:( Alexandre to the author. Papers are often rejected without Mas, Dave Donaldson) who replaced Matthew a formal review when the editor in charge of the Gentzkow , and Ilyana( Kuziemko. Benjamin paper believes the paper is unlikely to be finally Olken joined) the team on November 1, 2016. accepted in the AEJ Applied. The author’s sub- After being processed by the Pittsburgh office mission fee is refunded when papers are rejected staff, the manuscripts are allocated by the editor without formal review. to one of the coeditors. All subsequent respon- For manuscripts previously submitted to the sibility for handling the manuscript, including American Economic Review AER , authors can ( ) 719 720 AEA PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS MAY 2017

Table 2—Status of Manuscripts by Year of Submission, 2012–2016

Summary Revise and Submission year Accepted Pending Rejected reject resubmit Withdrawn Total 2012 47 0 266 156 2 0 471 10 0 56 33 0 0 100 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 2013 33 0 249 237 7 0 525 6 0 47 45 1 0 100 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 2014 31 0 196 268 3 0 498 6 0 39 54 1 0 100 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 2015 34 5 236 276 8 0 559 6 1 42 49 1 0 100 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 2016 21 115 169 318 19 1 643 3 18 26 49 3 0 100 ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) Notes: Entries show status as of November 1, 2016. Figures in parentheses show row percents rounded to the nearest integer. Pending manuscripts include submissions and revisions that were undergoing review as of November 1, 2016, while revise and resubmit manuscripts are manuscripts that have been returned and are in the hands of the authors on that date. Summary rejec- tions are manuscripts rejected without referee review.

Table 3––Distribution of First-Time Decision Times, by Submission Year

2014 2015 2016 Months to Monthly Cumulative Monthly Cumulative Monthly Cumulative response percent percent percent percent percent percent 1 56 56 51 51 48 48 2 21 77 21 72 14 62 3 21 98 25 97 18 80 4 2 100 2 99 17 97 5 0 100 1 100 3 100 6 0 100 0 100 0 100 7 0 100 0 100 0 100 8 0 100 0 100 0 100 9 0 100 0 100 0 100 10 0 100 0 100 0 100 11 0 100 0 100 0 100 12 0 100 0 100 0 100

Notes: Submission year denotes period from November 1 of the preceding year to October 31 of the stated year. The 2014–2015 distributions are the actual distributions. The 2016 distribution is projected from Kaplan-Meier hazards computed from the right-censored distribution of decision times of manuscripts submitted between November 1, 2015 and October 31, 2016. Percents are rounded to the nearest integer. Figures in this table supersede those contained in previous AEJ Applied reports.

choose to have the AER file forwarded to the AEJ expedites the review of a paper even when an Applied. That file includes the editor’s decision immediate decision isn’t possible. This feature letter, the referee reports, and, with the referee’s has been used for 52 papers submitted in 2016 permission, the cover letter to the AER editor. Table 1 , and 11 were ultimately published the The majority of referees agree to have their publication( ) rate of 11 52 for manuscripts com( - cover letters made available, and this informa- ing from the AER is larger/ than that of regular tion is sometimes sufficient to reach a decision papers, and those papers are also handled more on the paper. The additional information usually rapidly, in general . ) VOL. 107 NO. 5 American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 721

Table 4—Average Processing Times Table 6—Subject Matter of by Year of Publication Published Manuscripts, 2016 Counts of Areas ( ) Submission to acceptance Weeks from Total Weeks in acceptance to Subject category weeks review publication A—General economics and teaching 1 2012 46 14 35 B—History of economic thought, methodology, 0 2013 41 13 36 and heterodox approaches 2014 43 15 41 C—Mathematical and quantitative methods 4 2015 41 15 41 2016 44 15 38 D—Microeconomics 11 E—Macroeconomics and monetary economics 2 Note: Total weeks column shows the combined time a man- F—International economics 1 uscript spent in review at AEJ Applied and the time taken by authors to develop their various revisions. G—Financial economics 4 H—Public economics 8 Table 5—Article Length, by Year I—Health, education, and welfare 18 Number Average J—Labor and demographic economics 21 of articles page length K—Law and economics 5 L—Industrial organization 8 2010 40 26 2011 36 27 M—Business administration and business economics; 2 2012 40 28 marketing; accounting 2013 38 28 N—Economic history 3 2014 40 27 O—Economic development, technological change, 12 2015 35 28 and growth 2016 37 31 P—Economic systems 2 Note: The table refers to the January, April, July, and October Q—Agricultural and natural resource economics; 6 issues of AEJ Applied. environmental and ecological economics R—Urban, rural, and regional economics 6 Y—Miscellaneous categories 0 Z—Other special topics 3 Editorial Board Notes: Derived from JEL codes reported for each manu- The editorial board for AEJ Applied con- script submitted to AEJ Applied. Entries represent totals for sists of Nava Ashraf LSE , Abhijit Banerjee January, April, July, and October issues. MIT , Aimee Chin (Houston) , Janet Currie (Princeton) , Gordon ( Dahl ) UCSD , Jan De( Loecker) Princeton , Pascaline( ) Dupas Stanford , Raymond( ) Fisman Boston University( ) , Alessandro Gavazza ( LSE , Rema Hanna) Harvard , Gordon H. Hanson( ) papers submitted in 2014 plus 3 papers that UCSD , Dean( Karlan ) Yale , Patrick Kline are still in the R&R stage . This( makes the AEJ (UC-Berkeley) , Peter Kuhn( ) USC , Victor Applied an extremely competitive) journal. Lavy( Warwick) , Ethan Lewis( Dartmouth) , AEJ Applied has established a tradition of Atif Mian( Princeton) , Karthik Muralidharan( ) quick and efficient service for authors, of which UCSD , Diane( Whitmore) Schanzenbach we are very proud. The mean decision time for (Northwestern) , Alan Sorensen Wisconsin , first decision continues to be very low: 30 days Tavneet( Suri MIT) , Chad Syverson( Chicago), in 2016 down from 33 days in 2015, similar to and Miguel Urquiola( ) Columbia . ( ) 30 days in( 2014, down from 32 days in 2013, 39 ( ) days in 2012, and 41 days in 2011 . It is in part Editorial Data and Process due to the prescreening process, )but not only that factor. As shown in Table 3, we are particu- For the year ending October 31, 2016, the larly attentive to avoid long tails. Our objective journal received 643 new submissions. The is to avoid papers older than three months at all ­ultimate publication rate was 6 percent for costs. After a perfect record until 2014, we have 722 AEA PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS MAY 2017

Table 7—2016 Data-Posting Policy Statistics

Exemptions Number of Papers First-round Second-round Issue papers with data Full Partial compliance compliance Noncompliance January 10 10 0 4 10 0 0 April 8 8 0 5 8 0 0 July 10 10 0 5 9 1 0 October 9 9 0 4 9 0 0 Total 37 37 0 18 36 1 0

become less good at that recently, but maintain and the data were published without ex post a respectable record. In 2016, 80 percent of ­exemptions, although many papers 18 out of papers were decided within 3 months, 97 per- 37 have restrictions on what they can( post. The cent within 4 months, and 3 percent between 4 current) policy is that these limits are declared ex and 5 months. ante, which we found to be quite useful. We are also keen to offer authors a relatively The journal has also benefited tremendously “complete” contract, and the vast majority of from the behind-the-scenes work of Managing papers that are sent for revision are ultimately Editor Michelle DeBlasi, Assistant Managing accepted, usually without being returned to ref- Editor Kelly Andrews, and Editorial Assistants erees. The few papers that were rejected after Lauren Gattos and Emily Sisco. Their contribu- a first revise and resubmit were usually papers tions are gratefully acknowledged. first sent to the AER, which were not sent to We are more than grateful for the care and the referees the first time around, and thus have not speed with which referees are replying to our wasted much of the authors’ time. In very few requests. The journal could not function with- occasions, we had to reject a revision when the out them. I also want to take this opportunity robustness checks requested showed the results to thank my Coeditors, Alexandre Mas, Ilyana not to be robust. Kuziemko, and Dave Donaldson, along with The average time in review from initial receipt Benjamin Olken, who just joined us. Working to acceptance was 15 weeks, and the average lag with this great team is the best part of the job. from acceptance to publication was 38 weeks I would also like to thank Thomas Lemieux, Table 4 . Liran Einav, and Matthew Gentzkow for serving ( Table )5 gives the average page length for before them. manuscripts published in 2016. This remained This report is bittersweet, since this is my last roughly stable at 31 pages. The AEJ Applied with the journal that I was with since 2007. I does not enforce the AER page limit at the sub- won’t be too far from it since I am joining the mission stage. AER. But this has been a wonderful experience AEJ Applied has the same data posting pol- to start a journal from scratch and see it bloom icy as the AER, requiring authors of accepted and flourish. Alexandre Mas will replace me as papers who employ data in econometric analy- Editor as of January 1, 2017. I know the jour- sis, simulation models, or experiments to post nal is in good hands with him and his wonderful their data and programs on the journal website. team, and I am happy that I will now be able to Table 7 gives the statistics on data posting for submit to it. 2016. Every ­single paper published had data, Esther Duflo, Editor VOL. 107 NO. 5 American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 723

Article Referees for 2016

Abaluck, Jason Bursztyn, Leonardo Dobbie, Will Abraham, Katharine Cáceres-Delpiano, Julio Dobkin, Carlos Adhvaryu, Achyuta Cadena, Brian Dobridge, Christine Agan, Amanda Cage, Julia Doleac, Jennifer Aizer, Anna Cai, Jing Dorn, David Akee, Randall Callen, Michael Doyle, Joseph Aker, Jenny Campante, Filipe Draca, Mirko Albouy, David Cantoni, Enrico Dube, Oeindrila Aldy, Joseph Card, David Dupas, Pascaline Almond, Douglas Carranza, Eliana Durante, Ruben Alsan, Marcella Carrell, Scott Dustmann, Christian Ambler, Kate Casaburi, Lorenzo Eckel, Catherine Amodio, Francesco Casey, Katherine Egger, Peter Anderson, Michael Cattaneo, Matias Eli, Shari Aragon Sanchez, Fernando Cawley, John Emerick, Kyle Arcidiacono, Peter Cesarini, David Engbom, Niklas Arnold, David Chalfin, Aaron Enikolopov, Ruben Asher, Sam Chandrasekhar, Arun Eriksson, Katherine Ashraf, Nava Chaney, Eric Exley, Christine Attanasio, Orazio Charness, Gary Faber, Benjamin Aucejo, Esteban Chen, Alice Faberman, R. Azoulay, Pierre Chen, Daniel Fack, Gabrielle Bai, Jie Chen, Stacey Feigenbaum, James Bailey, Martha Chen, Yan Ferman, Bruno Bandiera, Oriana Chin, Aimee Ferraz, Claudio Barankay, Iwan Chou, Shin-Yi Ferreira, Fernando Bartik, Alex Chowdhury, Shyamal Fetzer, Thiemo Baum-Snow, Nathaniel Chyn, Eric Field, Erica Bazzi, Samuel Clark, Andrew Figlio, David Beam, Emily Clark, Damon Finan, Frederico Beaman, Lori Clay, Karen Firth, John Beauchamp, Jonathan Cohen, Alma Fischer, Greg Berry, James Cohen, Jessica Fishback, Price Best, Michael Cohn, Alain Fisman, Raymond Bhagwat, Vineet Cole, Shawn Fitzpatrick, Maria Bharadwaj, Prashant Collins, William Flaaen, Aaron Bhavnani, Rikhil Colmer, Jonathan Flory, Jeffrey Bitler, Marianne Cook, Philip Fogli, Alessandra Blanes i Vidal, Jordi Cortes, Patricia Folke, Olle Blattman, Christopher Courtemanche, Charles Fortin, Nicole Blau, David Cullen, Julie Frandsen, Brigham Blau, Francine Dahl, Gordon Fuchs-Schuendeln, Nicola Bleakley, Hoyt Das, Jishnu Fujiwara, Thomas Bold, Tessa De Giorgi, Giacomo Gadenne, Lucie Booij, Adam Dean, Joshua Galbiati, Roberto Borgschulte, Mark Dell, Melissa Galiani, Sebastian Boustan, Leah Dercon, Stefan Gallagher, Justin Bramoulle, Yann Deryugina, Tatyana Ganong, Peter Brandt, Loren Deschenes, Olivier Gans, Joshua Breza, Emily Devereux, Paul Garthwaite, Craig Brinch, Christian Di Tella, Rafael Gazze, Ludovica Bruhn, Miriam Diamond, Rebecca Gelber, Alexander Bryan, Gharad Dinerstein, Michael Geruso, Michael Bulman, George Dinkelman, Taryn Gicheva, Dora Burchardi, Konrad Dizon-Ross, Rebecca Gil, Ricard 724 AEA PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS MAY 2017

Gine, Xavier Iyer, Lakshmi Llull, Joan Glennerster, Rachel Iyer, Sriya Løken, Katrine Gneezy, Uri Jacks, David Low, Corinne Goldberg, Jessica Jacoby, Hanan Lowe, Matt Goldin, Jacob Jaeger, Simon Luca, Michael goldsmith-pinkham, Paul Jakiela, Pamela Lucas, Adrienne Goldstein, Markus Jayachandran, Seema Lusardi, Annamaria Goncalves, Felipe Jedwab, Remi Macchiavello, Rocco Gonzalez-Navarro, Marco Johnston, Andrew Machin, Stephen Goodman, Joshua Jones, Benjamin MacLeod, William Goodwin, Barry Joyce, Geoffrey Magruder, Jeremy Goolsbee, Austan Just, David Mahoney, Neale Gordon, Nora Kahn, Lisa Manacorda, Marco Gould Ellen, Ingrid Kaplan, Greg Mangum, Kyle Gowrisankaran, Gautam Kapustin, Max Manova, Kalina Greenberg, Kyle Karlan, Dean Mansfield, Richard Gregory, Jesse Kato, Takao Marie, Olivier Grenet, Julien Kaur, Supreet Marinescu, Ioana Gross, Tal Kearney, Melissa Mariotti, Martine Guiteras, Raymond Kessler, Daniel Marquez-Padilla, Fernanda Gulesci, Selim Keys, Benjamin Martinez Bravo, Monica Guren, Adam Kinnan, Cynthia Martorell, Paco Gurgand, Marc Kirwan, Barrett Marx, Benjamin Guryan, Jonathan Kline, Patrick Matray, Adrien Haggag, Kareem Klor, Esteban Maurel, Arnaud Handbury, Jessie Kolstad, Jonathan Maurin, Eric Handel, Benjamin Kopczuk, Wojciech Mazumder, Bhashkar Hanna, Rema Kovak, Brian Mbiti, Isaac Hansen, Benjamin Kowalski, Amanda McHenry, Peter Harari, Mariaflavia Kroft, Kory McKelway, Maddie Harmon, Nikolaj Krueger, Alan Mckenzie, David Harris, Douglas Kudamatsu, Masauyki Meager, Rachael Hart, Cassandra Kuhn, Peter Meara, Ellen Hartley, Daniel Kuminoff, Nicolai Meckel, Katherine Hassan, Tarek La Ferrara, Eliana Meer, Jonathan Haushofer, Johannes Lacetera, Nicola Meier, Stephan Heaton, Paul Lamadon, Thibaut Mello, Steven Heller, Sara landais, camille Melzer, Brian Hendren, Nathaniel Lang, Kevin meng, xin Hilger, Nate Lange, Fabian Michaels, Guy Hirsch, Barry Larreguy, Horacio Michalopoulos, Stelios Hjort, Jonas Lavecchia, Adam Miguel, Edward Hodgson, Charles Lavy, Victor Miller, Conrad Hoffman, Mitchell Lefgren, Lars Mironov, Maxim Holzer, Harry Leight, Jessica Mitman, Kurt Homonoff, Tatiana Lemieux, Thomas Mitton, Todd Hornbeck, Richard Leon, Gianmarco Mobarak, Ahmed Hossain, Tanjim Leonard, Kenneth Moehling, Carolyn Hsiang, Solomon Leung, Pauline Monras, Joan Hudson, Sally Levine, Phillip Mookherjee, Dilip Hunt, Jennifer Lewis, Ethan Mueser, Peter Hussam, Reshmaan Li, Danielle Muralidharan, Karthik Hyman, Joshua Lim, Claire Naidu, Suresh ichino, andrea Lindner, Attila Naritomi, Joana Imas, Alex Lindo, Jason Nath, Anusha Imberman, Scott Lindquist, Matthew Neidell, Matthew Imbert, Clement Lindqvist, Erik Neilson, Christopher Insler, Michael Liu, Elaine Niederle, Muriel VOL. 107 NO. 5 American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 725

Novosad, Paul Sanchez de la Sierra, Raul Todd, Petra Olivetti, Claudia Santos, Andres Troesken, Werner Olken, Benjamin Sapienza, Paola Troiano, Ugo Ost, Ben Sarsons, Heather Turner, Lesley Oster, Emily Schady, Norbert Turner, Matthew Ouss, Aurelie Schaner, Simone Turner, Sarah Owens, Emily Schechter, Laura Urquiola, Miguel Ozbeklik, Serkan Schilbach, Frank Valletta, Robert Pallais, Amanda Schlockermann, Jakob Van Soest, Daan Pan, Jessica Schneider, Henry Voena, Alessandra Parent, Daniel Schofield, Heather Vogl, Tom Pariente, William Schulhofer-Wohl, Sam Wacziarg, Romain Paserman, M. Daniele Schwandt, Hannes Waldinger, Fabian Pavan, Ronni Schwartzstein, Joshua Walters, Christopher Payne, A. Scott-Clayton, Judith Wang, Jin Pei, Zhuan Seim, Katja Wang, Shing-Yi Pierce, Justin Seira, Enrique Wang, Yongxiang Polyakova, Maria Sekhri, Sheetal Washington, Ebonya Pons, Vincent Shah, Manisha Wasserman, Melanie Pop-Eleches, Cristian Shastry, Gauri Watson, Tara Pope, Devin Shaw, Kathryn Weber, Andrea Pradhan, Menno Shenoy, Ashish Weber, Roberto Prina, Silvia Shoag, Daniel Weele, Joel Puglisi, Riccardo Shrestha, Maheshwor Weese, Eric Qian, Nancy Shue, Kelly Weinberg, Matthew Quintana-Domeque, Climent Singhal, Monica Whaley, Christopher Rao, Gautam Smith, Austin Wiswall, Matthew Rathelot, Roland Solis Vivallos, Alex Wozniak, Abigail Rauch, Ferdinand Sorensen, Alan Wüst, Miriam Reber, Sarah Sorkin, Isaac Xandri, Juan Pablo Rees, Daniel Sparber, Chad Yagan, Danny Rigol, Natalia Spears, Dean Yang, Crystal Robinson, Jonathan Speer, Jamin Yang, Dean Rockoff, Jonah Sprenger, Charles Yankovich, Michael Rodriguez-Planas, Nuria Stanton, Christopher Yannelis, Constantine Rosales-Rueda, Maria Steinwender, Claudia Yelowitz, Aaron Rossin-Slater, Maya Stinebrickner, Todd Yin, Wes Roth, Benjamin Storeygard, Adam Yuchtman, Noam Roth, Sefi Stromberg, David Zafar, Basit Royer, Heather Sukhtankar, Sandip Zeltzer, Dan Saavedra, Juan Suri, Tavneet Zidar, Owen Sacerdote, Bruce Sydnor, Justin Ziebarth, Nicolas Sadoff, Sally Tahoun, Ahmed Zimmerman, Seth Sahm, Claudia Tanaka, Shinsuke Zucker, Ariel Salvanes, Kjell Timmins, Christopher Zucman, Gabriel