How to Write a Quarterly Journal of Economics Cover Letter (With Template)
The QJE cover letter is not a contribution pitch. It is a disclosures letter that handles proprietary data, exclusive submission, competing interests, and related-paper context. Here is exactly what it must say, with a copyable template.
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How to use this page well
These pages work best when they behave like tools, not essays. Use the quick structure first, then apply it to the exact journal and manuscript situation.
Question | What to do |
|---|---|
Use this page for | A working artifact you can actually apply to the manuscript or response package. |
Start with | Fill the template with real manuscript-specific details instead of leaving it generic. |
Common mistake | Copying the structure without tailoring the logic to the actual submission. |
Best next step | Use the artifact once, then cut anything that does not affect the decision. |
Quick answer: A Quarterly Journal of Economics cover letter is a disclosures letter, not a contribution pitch. QJE does not expect you to argue the paper's importance in the letter, the 250-word abstract does that. The letter exists to clear four things: the exclusive-submission statement, all-authors approval, the data and code disclosure required by the QJE data policy (flag proprietary or restricted data here), and competing-interest plus related-paper disclosures. Keep it under one page.
Why the QJE cover letter is different from a generic journal cover letter
The right question at QJE isn't "how do I make my cover letter compelling?" It's "what do I actually have to disclose, and where does the editorial argument really live?"
At a general-science journal the cover letter carries the significance case. At a top-5 economics journal it does not.
QJE is one of the five general-interest economics flagships (alongside the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economic Studies), and the editorial culture is the same across all five: the abstract and introduction make the case, and a letter that pitches the contribution signals that the author hasn't internalized how the field works.
The editors at QJE make desk decisions fast, often within roughly two weeks across the 5-editor Harvard office, and they are reading the abstract first. QJE also runs one of the highest desk-rejection rates among the top-5 journals, roughly 62% per JCR and SciRev community data, so a clean abstract matters far more than a polished letter.
Key Insight
QJE has no submission fee and no hard page limit, but according to JCR and SciRev community data it desk-rejects roughly 62% of submissions, one of the highest rates among top-5 economics journals. The cover letter cannot rescue a paper whose general-interest case isn't already visible in the abstract. The letter's only job is to keep your submission administratively clean.
Run a Quarterly Journal of Economics submission readiness check before you write the letter, because if the desk-reject risk is in the abstract, the letter won't fix it.
What a QJE cover letter must do (and must not do)
Letter job | What to say | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|
Identify the submission | One line naming the manuscript and the corresponding author | A paragraph of background or motivation |
Exclusive-submission statement | Confirm the work is original, unpublished, and not under consideration elsewhere | Vague "we hope you'll consider" framing |
All-authors approval | State that all authors approved the submission | Omitting it on a multi-author empirical paper |
Data and code disclosure | Flag proprietary or restricted data per the QJE data policy | Hiding a restricted-data dependency until R&R |
Competing interests + related papers | Disclose funding conflicts and any related or prior submission | Silence on a closely related working paper |
Source: QJE data policy, QJE instructions to authors, accessed June 2026.
The order matters less than the discipline. Every line in a QJE cover letter should be a disclosure or a confirmation. The moment a sentence starts arguing why the result matters, it belongs in the introduction instead.
Quarterly Journal of Economics cover letter template
Use this as a disclosures checklist in letter form, not as a script to embellish. Fill the brackets, delete any line that doesn't apply, and keep it under one page.
Dear Editors,
We are pleased to submit our manuscript, "[MANUSCRIPT TITLE]," for consideration
at The Quarterly Journal of Economics. The corresponding author is [AUTHOR NAME],
[INSTITUTION], reachable at [EMAIL].
This manuscript is original work. It has not been published previously and is not
under consideration elsewhere. All authors have reviewed and approved this version
and agree to its submission.
Regarding the QJE data policy: [our data and code can be posted to the QJE Dataverse
to permit replication upon acceptance] / [our analysis relies on proprietary or
restricted data from [SOURCE]; we describe the access conditions in the manuscript
and notify the Editors here that the standard replication requirements cannot be
fully met for this reason].
We disclose the following: [no competing interests] / [the following funding and
competing interests: [DETAIL]]. A related working paper, "[RELATED PAPER]," is
[posted as a preprint at [LINK]] / [not under review elsewhere].
Thank you for considering our work.
Sincerely,
Corresponding author, on behalf of all authorsIf you find yourself wanting to add a paragraph on why the finding is important, stop. That paragraph is a symptom that the abstract isn't carrying its weight yet.
The verbatim declarations editors look for
Two lines are non-negotiable on any QJE submission, and they should appear as written.
Non-duplication and exclusive-submission declaration:
"This manuscript is original work. It has not been published previously and is not under consideration elsewhere."
All-authors-approved declaration:
"All authors have reviewed and approved this version and agree to its submission."
By submitting to QJE, you are confirming the manuscript is original, unpublished, and not under simultaneous consideration at another journal. This single-submission norm is standard across economics: simultaneous submission to a second journal during review is a serious breach. Stating it explicitly costs you nothing and removes one administrative question from the editor's desk.
The data and code declaration QJE actually cares about
This is the part of a QJE cover letter that most authors get wrong, and it is the part QJE explicitly asks for. The QJE data policy directs authors to use the cover letter to notify the Editors if the data are proprietary, or if for some other reason the replication requirements cannot be met. The policy specifies that after acceptance, authors are expected to post their data, programs, and sufficient details to permit replication to the QJE Dataverse repository.
So the letter is where you front-load a replication problem, not where you hide one. If your identification strategy rests on licensed administrative records, a confidential firm panel, or restricted-access survey microdata, say so now. An editor who discovers a restricted-data dependency at the revise-and-resubmit stage is an editor who feels managed; an editor who reads it on page one of the cover letter is an editor who can plan around it.
A weak opener versus a strong opener
The opening lines of a QJE cover letter should identify and disclose, not sell. Hold the two side by side:
Weak opener, avoid this pitch framing:
Strong opener, do this disclosure framing instead:
Weak (the wrong instinct, imported from general-science journals):
We are excited to submit this important paper, which we believe makes a major contribution to the literature on inequality and will be of broad interest to your readers.
Why it fails: it argues significance, which belongs in the abstract; it uses promotional language an economics editor reads as naivety; and it discloses nothing.
Strong (the QJE-correct instinct):
We submit "the manuscript title" for consideration at The Quarterly Journal of Economics. The work is original, unpublished, and not under consideration elsewhere, and all authors have approved this submission.
Why it works: it names the submission, clears the exclusive-submission requirement in one sentence, and confirms authorship. It does the letter's actual job and gets out of the way of the abstract.
Article types and what changes
QJE publishes original research articles in economics; it is not a journal with a wide ladder of formats like a clinical title. There are no separate "brief report" or "communication" tracks to choose between, so the cover letter does not need to declare an article type. The implication is that your letter is the same shape for every QJE submission: a disclosures letter for a full research article. What varies is the data and competing-interest content, not the structure.
Submission element | QJE expectation | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
Article type | Original research article (single track) | Not declared in the letter |
Abstract | 250 words maximum; carries the general-interest case | The manuscript, not the letter |
JEL codes | Required at submission | Title page and submission form |
Cover letter | Disclosures only, under one page | Uploaded with the submission |
Replication package | Data, programs, replication details | QJE Dataverse, after acceptance |
Source: QJE instructions to authors, QJE data policy, accessed June 2026.
Mandatory statements you should confirm before submitting
Three declarations should be settled before you upload, even when QJE handles some of them through the submission form rather than the letter body.
- Exclusive submission. The manuscript is original, unpublished, and not under simultaneous consideration elsewhere. State it in the letter.
- Data and code availability. Confirm you can meet the QJE Dataverse replication requirement on acceptance, or notify the Editors in the letter that proprietary or restricted data prevent full compliance.
- Competing interests. Disclose funding sources and any financial or advisory relationships that bear on the work. Silence is read as "none," so if there is something to declare, the letter is the place.
Suggested reviewers are not required in the QJE cover letter, so do not pad the letter with a referee list of 3 to 5 reviewers the way a general-science journal invites. If you have a genuine conflict, you may note referees to exclude, but a list of names you want is unnecessary and the 5-editor office routes papers by field regardless.
Address the letter to the Editors generically rather than to a named individual, because that office routes by general-interest fit. Before you quote any editor's name anywhere in your submission package, verify the current editorial team on the journal's own editorial page, because rosters change.
From the editor's chair
Here is what the disclosures-only convention looks like from the other side of the desk. With a desk-rejection rate around 62% per JCR and SciRev data, the editor's default posture is to find a reason to stop reading, not a reason to continue. When we read a QJE-style cover letter, we are not looking to be persuaded; we are scanning for risk. Is this paper exclusively ours? Did all authors sign off?
Is there a data dependency that will blow up at the replication stage? Is there a competing interest that should be on the record? A clean letter answers all four in under a page and lets us turn straight to the abstract, where the real decision is made.
A letter that instead spends three paragraphs telling us the result is important does the opposite: it delays the abstract and signals an author who is hoping the framing will carry a paper the evidence might not.
What our pre-submission review work shows about QJE cover letters
In our pre-submission review work with Quarterly Journal of Economics submissions, the cover letter is rarely the thing that sinks a paper, but it is reliably the thing that exposes an unforced problem. Three patterns recur often enough that we now check for them by default before any QJE submission goes out.
The pitch-letter reflex. The most common pattern is authors importing a general-science cover-letter habit into economics. They write a QJE cover letter that argues the contribution, frames the broad significance, and flatters the journal, exactly what a Nature-style letter would do and exactly what a top-5 economics editor reads as a tell.
Across our QJE reviews, when a draft cover letter spends more words on importance than on disclosures, it almost always pairs with an abstract that buried the identification strategy. The cover letter is a symptom; the abstract is the disease. We send these back to fix the abstract first, because at QJE the general-interest case has to be visible in 250 words, not rescued in a letter.
The undeclared restricted-data dependency. The second pattern is a data and code disclosure that is missing or vague. The QJE data policy is explicit that the cover letter is where you notify the Editors if data are proprietary or if replication requirements cannot be met, yet a large share of the empirical QJE drafts we review either say nothing about data access or assert "data available on request" without acknowledging a licensed or confidential source.
When the identification strategy rests on restricted administrative records or a proprietary firm panel, that has to be on page one of the letter, not discovered at the revise-and-resubmit stage when the QJE Dataverse requirement comes due. We flag every QJE submission where the data-access reality and the cover-letter disclosure don't match, because that mismatch is the kind of thing that turns a conditional acceptance into a problem.
The silent competing interest and related-paper gap. The third pattern is incomplete disclosure of funding, competing interests, and closely related work. Authors who have a related working paper circulating, or funding from an entity with a stake in the result, frequently leave it out of the QJE cover letter on the theory that it is in the manuscript somewhere. It needs to be in the letter.
Across our QJE reviews, the competing-interest line and the related-paper line are the two disclosures most often missing entirely. They are also the two an editor is most annoyed to learn about after the fact. We treat a complete disclosure block, exclusive submission, all-authors approval, data and code, competing interests, related papers, as a hard checklist item, because a clean disclosures letter is the one part of the submission an author fully controls.
These are all fixable before you submit. An QJE cover letter and disclosures check verifies that your exclusive-submission line, data-policy disclosure, and competing-interest statement are present and that your abstract carries the general-interest case the letter is not supposed to.
Final pre-submission checklist
Run this before you upload through Editorial Express:
- the letter is under one page and contains no argument for the paper's importance
- the exclusive-submission line is present and verbatim
- the all-authors-approved line is present
- the data and code disclosure matches your actual data access (proprietary or restricted data is flagged)
- competing interests and any related or prior submission are disclosed
- the abstract is 250 words or fewer and makes the general-interest case the letter does not
- the letter is addressed to the Editors generically, with no unverified editor name quoted
That seven-line check catches nearly every preventable QJE cover-letter problem, and it takes about five minutes.
When the cover letter tells you the paper isn't ready
The QJE cover letter is diagnostically useful in one specific way: if you feel the urge to pitch the contribution in the letter, that urge is information. It usually means the abstract hasn't yet made the general-interest case stand on its own. The fix is never a better cover letter.
The fix is an abstract and introduction where a scientifically literate economist outside your exact subfield can see the question, the identification strategy, and the consequence within the first page. If the letter is doing work the abstract should do, the manuscript is entering QJE's fast, high-desk-rejection queue weaker than it needs to be.
Readiness check
Run the scan to see how your manuscript scores on these criteria.
See score, top issues, and what to fix before you submit.
Submit if / Think twice if
The cover letter is a readiness signal as much as a disclosure. Use it as a final gate.
Submit to QJE if:
- Your abstract makes the general-interest case in 250 words without help from the cover letter, so the letter can stay a pure disclosures document
- Your identification strategy is visible from the abstract and introduction, not buried in a methods appendix
- You can either post a full replication package to the QJE Dataverse on acceptance, or you have a clean cover-letter sentence explaining why proprietary data prevent it
- Your competing-interest and related-paper disclosures are complete and on the record
Think twice if:
- You feel the need to argue significance in the cover letter, that almost always means the abstract is not carrying the general-interest case yet
- Your data and code disclosure says "available on request" while the analysis actually depends on a licensed or confidential dataset, a mismatch that surfaces at the replication stage
- You have a closely related working paper or a funding conflict you were planning to leave out of the letter
- Your introduction states the result before it explains why economists outside your subfield should care, the editor reads that as a subfield paper, not a QJE paper
Frequently asked questions
QJE does not require a contribution-pitching cover letter, and pitching the paper is the wrong move at a top-5 economics journal. But a short disclosures cover letter is expected whenever you have something to declare: proprietary or restricted data, a competing interest, a related or prior submission, or a reason you cannot meet the replication-package requirement. The abstract, not the letter, is the editorial selling document at QJE.
Four things: the exclusive-submission statement that the work is original, unpublished, and not under consideration elsewhere; an all-authors-approved line; the data and code disclosure required by the QJE data policy (flag proprietary or restricted data here); and competing-interest and related-paper disclosures. Keep it to under one page. Do not restate the abstract or argue significance.
Under one page, often half a page. QJE editors make desk decisions fast across a 5-editor Harvard office, and the letter is a checklist of disclosures, not a sales document. The 250-word abstract carries the general-interest argument; the cover letter just clears the administrative and ethics requirements.
The QJE data policy asks authors to notify the Editors in the cover letter if the data used are proprietary or if, for some other reason, the replication requirements cannot be met. After acceptance, authors post data, programs, and replication details to the QJE Dataverse. If your identification rests on restricted or licensed data, say so in the letter so the editor is not surprised later.
QJE does not ask for suggested reviewers in the cover letter, and naming a desired editor is unnecessary because the 5-editor office routes by field. Address the letter to the Editors generically. Verify the current editorial team on the journal's own editorial page before naming anyone anywhere in the submission.
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