American Economic Review Submission Process

First decisions are weighted toward the Co-Editor desk screen, which is where about 40 percent of submissions end (Report of the Editor, 2025 reporting year). For papers sent to referees, the path runs substantially longer through about three reports on average and a revision cycle, while edge cases diverge sharply: a clearly out-of-scope or below-bar paper is an expedited desk return, typically within a week or two, and a borderline submission is an outlier that can sit longer while the Co-Editor weighs breadth. AER is a top-5 general-interest economics journal, and the cross-subfield bar is the dominant feature of the early timeline.

If you want an outside read before you open ScholarOne, use the free manuscript readiness check to test whether the contribution reads as broad enough for the AER desk screen.

Initial quality check: completeness and policy fit

The first layer is administrative but still decisive. Before a Co-Editor reads for breadth, the submission has to be complete: each author's Disclosure Statement covering financial support, conflicts of interest, and IRB approval where relevant (submissions without these statements are considered incomplete and will not be reviewed), a brief description of any AI use in preparing the manuscript, and the submission fee. The AEA also screens every submission for plagiarism with CrossRef's Similarity Check. Data and code compliance is reviewed later, by the AEA data editor after conditional acceptance, but data access limitations should be noted at submission. A submission can look finished in the portal and still be weak if the abstract and introduction do not make the cross-subfield contribution obvious.

Editorial assignment: routing to a handling Co-Editor

AER uses an editorial team with field-specific Co-Editors, so the contribution is read first by a Co-Editor close to the paper's area but judging it against a general-interest bar. The framing you signal in the introduction determines how the Co-Editor weighs the contribution, and a narrow subfield framing can make an important result read as specialized.

Peer review: importance assessment after the desk screen

Manuscripts that clear the desk screen move to referees (about three reports on average) under single-blind review: the author's name is revealed to the referees, while the referees remain anonymous to authors. The referee job is not only to check that the identification or the theory is correct. It is to decide whether the contribution is important, whether it is credible, and whether it interests economists beyond the paper's own subfield.

Final decision: breadth stays live after reports return

Even after review, the decision still turns on importance and breadth. A technically strong paper can be returned if the reports show the contribution is a competent extension, the result is too specialized for the general audience, or the case for top-5 significance is asserted rather than demonstrated.

This is where the selective first decision comes from. Before any referee is assigned, a handling Co-Editor reads the abstract, the introduction, and the stated contribution, and decides whether the paper clears the top-5 cross-subfield bar.

At this stage the Co-Editor is effectively asking:

• will economists outside this paper's subfield find the contribution important, or is it a clean extension of established work?

• is the contribution broad and significant enough for a general-interest top-5 journal rather than a field journal?

• is the package complete, with disclosure statements, data access limitations noted, and a focused main text rather than an argument that lives in online appendices?

Because this screen is selective, a decision that arrives in the first weeks is almost always a desk return rather than an acceptance. The turnaround lets authors re-route to AER:Insights or an AEJ, and the 50 percent fee refund on desk rejections reduces the cost of a fast no.

Papers that pass the screen go to referees (about three reports on average), who typically assess:

• the importance and breadth of the contribution for economics as a whole

• the credibility of the identification strategy or the theoretical advance

• whether the conclusions are supported and appropriately bounded

• whether the paper genuinely interests economists beyond its own subfield

AER uses single-blind review, so the author's name is revealed to referees while referees remain anonymous to authors, and the AEA data and code availability policy means empirical, simulation, and experimental papers must provide replication materials before acceptance. Refereeing and the revision cycle run several months, and a single manuscript can move faster or slower depending on referee availability and the number of revision rounds.

• Reject (fast, pre-review): a desk return from the handling Co-Editor, usually on cross-subfield interest, breadth, or the top-5 bar. Papers rejected without review receive a 50 percent fee refund; re-route to AER:Insights, an AEJ, or another general journal.

• Revise and resubmit: substantive referee concerns, often about identification, robustness, or the strength of the contribution. The revised paper usually goes back to referees; respond point by point and expect more than one round.

• Conditional acceptance: the paper is essentially accepted pending specific fixes and replication materials. Respond carefully and promptly.

• Accept: the Report of the Editor says no manuscripts were conditionally accepted on first submission in 2025; acceptance follows one or more R&R cycles.

Four recurring patterns return otherwise-capable AER packages in the first decision window:

• Treating a fast first decision as a careful rejection on the merits. At AER a quick decision is almost always a desk return on breadth, not a refereed judgment of the methods. The contribution read as a subfield extension before referees were ever assigned.
• Burying the contribution in the introduction. The Co-Editor reads the introduction for cross-subfield importance. If the broad significance is not made explicit there, an important result reads as specialized.
• Letting the argument live in online appendices. A main text that depends on extensive appendices to make its case reads as unfocused, and AER requires the paper to be self-contained without the Supplemental Appendix.
• Sending a field-journal paper to a general-interest venue. A clean, narrow contribution is what AER returns first; AER:Insights or an AEJ is often the better home.

Check whether your AER introduction makes the cross-subfield contribution visible to the Co-Editor →

Check if your AER identification and data package are complete before the administrative check →

Check whether your paper fits AER, AER:Insights, or an AEJ →

This guide tells you what AER editors look for in the first decision window; the review tells you whether your paper passes that screen. 60-day money-back guarantee; authors retain all rights and we do not train models on submitted manuscripts.

In our pre-submission review work on American Economic Review submissions, three patterns account for most of the manuscripts that stall in the selective first-decision window, before a referee is ever assigned.

The broad importance is implied, not argued

We repeatedly see AER manuscripts where the introduction is written for specialists in the paper's own subfield and assumes the reader already values the question. Because the handling Co-Editor reads the introduction against a general-interest bar, an importance claim that is implied rather than argued reads as narrow. The fix we push is to state, early and plainly, why economists in other fields should care and what the result changes for the broader literature.

The contribution is a competent extension rather than a step-change

A related pattern is a clean, well-executed paper that extends an established result without changing how economists think about the question. The Co-Editor registers an extension immediately, and it reframes solid work as a field-journal paper. We help authors test the contribution against the top-5 bar before submission and, where the honest answer is an extension, route to AER:Insights or an AEJ rather than spend a desk-reject cycle. In our American Economic Review readiness checks, the tell is usually in the abstract and introduction: the result is stated as a finding rather than as a shift in how the field should reason, and that framing is the first thing the Co-Editor reads.

The argument depends on the online appendix

The third pattern is a main text that cannot stand on its own because the identification, robustness, or key results live in extensive appendices. AER requires the paper to be self-contained, so a reader can evaluate the findings without the Supplemental Appendix, and we push authors to make the core argument complete and legible in the main text, with appendices supporting rather than carrying the paper. We routinely flag American Economic Review submissions where a key robustness table or identification result lives only in the supplementary appendix, and we move it into the main-text results so the desk screen can see the core argument without reconstructing it.

AER (top-5 general-interest economics, JIF above 7) sits among several AEA venues, and the desk screen is partly a routing decision:

• choose AER when the contribution is important and broad enough that economists across fields will care

• choose AER:Insights for an important, well-identified result that does not need full-length treatment

• choose an AEJ (Applied, Macro, Micro, or Policy) when the contribution is strong but specialized to one field

• consider another general-interest journal when the paper is solid but the top-5 cross-subfield bar is a stretch

Last verified October 2026 against the AEA's public AER author materials and submission policies and the AER Report of the Editor (2025 reporting year). Editorial timing and fees shift between updates; treat the numbers as planning ranges and confirm the current figures on the AEA site before you submit.

AER wants a result the whole discipline reads. Field-specific contributions face a different bar. Weigh American Economic Review against the closest alternatives.

AER does not require a cover letter. What works at this venue: American Economic Review cover letter guide.