Rejected from the Quarterly Journal of Economics? The Best Journals to Submit Next

The right target after QJE depends on whether your paper is broad economics, theory-leaning, a modeling contribution, or a strong but subfield-deep applied result. Selectivity is similar across the top-5; the real differences are editorial taste, submission cost, and how the journal weighs general-interest versus field-specific contribution.

Source: AER submission guidelines, JPE instructions for authors, Review of Economic Studies submissions, AEJ: Applied submission guidelines, JEEA submission fee, accessed June 2026.

1. American Economic Review

The AER is the broadest top-5 outlet and the most common lateral move from QJE. Both want general-interest economics, but the emphasis differs: QJE rewards a memorable central finding and an identification strategy that does the heavy lifting, while the AER rewards a clear economic question with cross-subfield interest and is comfortable with a wider range of styles.

If QJE's signal was that the contribution read as narrow rather than wrong, the AER's editors may weigh the empirical or policy payoff more heavily. The 50 percent desk-rejection refund also lowers the cost of a fast no.

Best for: broad applied or theory papers where the economic question is the protagonist and the general-interest case is already clear.

2. Journal of Political Economy

JPE carries the Chicago tradition: theory and applied work integrated tightly, with price theory and structural reasoning valued. If QJE found your contribution sound but not striking enough for its taste, JPE may read the same paper as a strong economics contribution built on a clean mechanism.

Be honest about the cost: the fee is non-refundable even on desk rejection, and the median time to acceptance runs well over a year, so submit only when the fit is real. Authors who have completed three or more JPE referee reports in the prior year can request a fee waiver.

Best for: theory-meets-applied papers where the economic mechanism, not a surprising headline result, is the contribution.

3. Review of Economic Studies

ReStud integrates theory and empirics with a European editorial tradition comfortable with technically demanding work. A paper that was a near-miss at QJE on general-interest framing rather than rigor often lands well at ReStud, which is more willing to engage a careful theoretical or theory-empirics argument on its own terms. Note the submission fee rises to $250 from June 2026, with a reduced rate of $150 for students, recent PhDs, or authors from low and middle-income economies.

Best for: technically rigorous theory or theory-empirics papers that were close at QJE but needed the reader to follow the argument carefully.

4. Econometrica

If your QJE rejection turned on the methodological move, Econometrica is the natural home for work where a new model, estimator, identification result, or inference procedure is the point. QJE likes methods that other economists adopt, but it wants them attached to a substantive finding; Econometrica will engage the technical contribution directly even when the substantive payoff is narrower.

Its desk screen is fast (roughly two weeks, with about one third of submissions desk rejected), and if your paper goes through review there, the Econometric Society siblings Quantitative Economics and Theoretical Economics waive the additional fee on transfer with the reports attached.

Best for: papers where the modeling, estimation, or identification contribution is the protagonist rather than the empirical headline.

5. AEJ: Applied Economics

When QJE's signal is that the result is real but subfield-deep, AEJ: Applied is often the better-fit home than another general flagship. It is built for empirical applied microeconomics (labor, development, health, education, empirical trade and corporate finance) and its referees engage the field contribution directly rather than asking whether the whole discipline will care. The AEA fee structure and 50 percent desk-rejection refund match the AER, so the cost of a fast no is the same.

Best for: strong empirical microeconomics papers whose contribution is field-deep rather than cross-subfield, where QJE's general-interest bar was the binding constraint.

6. Journal of the European Economic Association

JEEA is a general-interest journal that invites submissions across all areas of economics without methodological or affiliation bias, and it is the most natural general home outside the US flagships. Acceptance runs around 7 percent with a desk-rejection rate near 56 percent, so it is genuinely selective, not a soft landing. The €100 fee is waived when the submitting author and all coauthors are based in low or middle-income countries.

For a paper with broad appeal that needs a general-interest venue beyond AER and QJE, JEEA is the strongest option.

Best for: broad-interest papers that want a general economics audience and a lower submission cost than the US flagships, including European-based authors.

Economics does not run a portfolio transfer service. There is no formal pipeline that moves your manuscript from QJE to the AER, JPE, ReStud, or Econometrica with its referee reports attached, because these journals belong to separate societies and presses. You resubmit each one as a fresh submission, pay each fee, and start each clock over. Plan the ladder before you start, because every rung costs months.

The one real internal step-down anywhere in top economics is inside the Econometric Society, and it does not run through QJE: a paper reviewed by Econometrica and transferred to Quantitative Economics or Theoretical Economics with its Econometrica decision letter and reports is exempt from the additional submission fee at the sibling journal. QJE has no equivalent of its own. That makes the order in which you climb the ladder more important here than in fields with transfer pipelines.

A realistic ladder for a top-5-quality paper rejected from QJE looks like this:

• First tier (lateral move): the AER for broad work; JPE or ReStud for theory-meets-applied; Econometrica for a methods-leading paper. Pick by editorial taste, not by ranking, since selectivity is similar across all five. QJE's no-fee, fast-desk model means you can usually afford to test the closest general-interest fit first.

• General field-flagship tier: JEEA for broad-interest work that wants a general audience without the US-flagship cost.

• Specialist field tier: AEJ:

Applied Economics for an empirical microeconomics paper whose contribution is field-deep, or the top journal in your subfield (the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of International Economics) where specialist referees value the work the generalist office could not place.

If QJE desk rejected in about two weeks, that is almost always a general-interest or framing signal, so move laterally or to a field flagship now. If referees raised substantive concerns, fix them first; the same gaps will surface at the next journal, and the economics referee pool for a given topic is small enough that you may draw the same reviewers.

In our pre-submission review work with Quarterly Journal of Economics submissions, four named rejection patterns generate the most consistent rejections, and each one points to a different next step. Each maps to QJE's editorial culture of demanding a general-interest contribution, and editors consistently screen for it at the two-week desk pace. SciRev community data shows the same fast-no, high-desk-rejection cadence the patterns below describe. Knowing which one applies to your paper is the difference between a productive resubmission and a second rejection from the same root cause.

The general-interest case is buried below the abstract. QJE's editorial bar is a contribution that matters to economists across multiple subfields, and the 250-word abstract is where that case has to be made. Across our QJE pre-submission reviews, the single most common pattern is a strong paper whose abstract spends its words compressing field context instead of stating why the result matters beyond the immediate literature.

The QJE instructions ask the abstract to be comprehensible before the article is read and to clearly state the importance of the work, and a paper that fails that test at desk is usually fine on substance.

When that is the issue, the fix is to rewrite the abstract and the first two introduction pages so a labor, macro, public, or development economist can see the stakes, and the AER is often a productive lateral target once the framing is repaired.

The contribution is field-deep without cross-subfield consequence. A second pattern appears when the data, model, or identification design is serious but the manuscript reads like a top field-journal paper until page 20. We repeatedly see QJE submissions where the introduction frames the result as valuable mainly to one subfield, which is exactly what a generalist desk editor needs a reason to override.

This is a fit problem, not a substance problem: moving the same paper to another general flagship without surfacing the broader consequence simply moves the same objection. If the consequence genuinely stays narrow after that work, AEJ: Applied Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Labor Economics, or the Review of Financial Studies is the better home than QJE.

A conventional empirical or theoretical move is asked to carry a flagship claim. QJE often rewards work whose data construction, identification strategy, measurement approach, or model changes how other economists work.

In the manuscripts we review, a recurring rejection root cause is a standard regression design applied to a new dataset, where the substantive result is real but the methodological move is conventional and the tables, figures, and appendix never establish why it rises above field-journal significance.

When the method is conventional but the contribution is real, Econometrica is rarely the answer, but AEJ: Applied or a strong field journal usually values the same work the QJE office routed away.

The identification or robustness package is not airtight before review. For empirical submissions, QJE referees and the editor expect the identification argument, robustness checks, sample construction, and the AEA-style replication package to hold up before review, not to be promised in a revision. We see papers where the headline result is convincing but the identifying assumption is asserted in one sentence, the alternative specifications are thin, or the effect-size reporting is incomplete.

That is a substance gap every top-5 journal will flag. Strengthen the identification section, the robustness appendix, and the data plan, then resubmit; otherwise the next set of referees rejects for the same reason.

Across these patterns, the operative distinction is fit versus substance. A fit rejection means the work is sound but framed for the wrong audience, and you move laterally or to a field flagship. A substance rejection in the identification, robustness, or methodological altitude means the next journal will reject for the same reason unless you do the work first.

Don't just resubmit the paper down the ladder. The most expensive mistake after a QJE rejection is treating every rejection as a fit problem and resubmitting unchanged when the paper needs real work. If referees raised concerns about your identification strategy, your robustness package, or your general-interest framing, the next set of referees will see the same gaps again, and in economics the referee pool for a given topic is small enough that you may draw the same reviewers.

Be honest about which rejection you got. A desk rejection in about two weeks is almost always a general-interest or framing signal: the editor judged the contribution not broad enough for the flagship, and the paper itself may be fine to move now. A post-review rejection with substantive referee reports is a different message; those reports are the most valuable feedback your paper will get for free, and ignoring them to chase a faster resubmission wastes them. Read them as a roadmap, not a verdict.

An appeal is rarely the answer. At top-5 economics journals, appeals succeed only when you can show the handling editor misread a central result, and a general-interest desk rejection is almost never reversible. Because QJE costs nothing to submit to and returns a fast decision, your time is better spent reframing the abstract and targeting the next journal than contesting this one.