American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics

ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)

Submission Guidelines

Please read these guidelines thoroughly before submitting a paper.

Submission Policy

All papers submitted to the AEJ: Applied Economics must represent original work and should fully reference and describe all prior work on the same subject. Papers under consideration for publication at another journal are ineligible for submission to the AEJ: Applied Economics. (For papers previously submitted to the American Economic Review or AER: Insights, see below.)

Prior to submission, authors should familiarize themselves with how the AEJ: Applied Economics handles conflicts of interest between authors and coeditors, as described in our Editorial Policy. Potential personal conflicts should be identified in an accompanying cover letter during submission.

The AEA screens all submissions for plagiarism using CrossRef's Similarity Check.  By submitting to an AEA journal, the author grants permission to the Association to check the manuscript for plagiarism using the Similarity Check system.

Submissions to the AEA journals should conform to the AEA Disclosure Policy, which provides principles for the disclosure of financial conflicts of interest and, when relevant, information regarding IRB approval. Disclosure is author- and paper-specific; a specific relationship may be relevant for one of an author’s papers but not for another.

It is the policy of the AEA to publish papers only if the data and code used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and access to the data and code is nonexclusive to the authors. All submissions must comply with the AEA Data and Code Availability Policy, even papers using data that cannot be published.

Research involving field experiments must be recorded in the AEA registry for randomized controlled trials (RCTs). (Laboratory experiments do not need to be registered at this time.)

The AEJ: Applied Economics reserves the right to reject any paper without review. Papers previously rejected by the AEJ: Applied Economics should not be resubmitted and will not reviewed.

Submission and Publication Fees

Submission Fee

The AEJ: Applied Economics submission fee is adjusted according to AEA membership status and the economic classification that applies to the country in which the authors work.  For authors to take advantage of the lower (or waived) fees offered to low- and middle-income countries, at least one coauthor must meet that criteria. Please be prepared to pay the fee by credit card during the submission process. Papers rejected without review will be refunded 50 percent of the submission fee.

• AEA members: (Join the AEA)
  • High-income countries: $200
  • Middle-income countries: $100
  • Low-income countries: $0
• Nonmembers:
  
  • High-income countries: $300
  • Middle-income countries: $200
  • Low-income countries: $0

Publication Fee

If a paper is accepted for publication, a fee of $15 per typeset page will be assessed when page proofs are sent for author review. (Note: this applies to papers first submitted on or after February 1, 2024.)

Length Recommendations

The average length of an AEJ: Applied Economics article is 32–33 typeset pages. However, shorter, impactful papers will also be given full consideration.

We strongly recommend that manuscripts not exceed a length equivalent to 40 pages when formatted using 12-point font, 1.5 spacing, and 1.5-inch margins. The suggested length includes figures, tables, references, and appendices.

Manuscript Preparation

• All manuscripts should be in PDF format. Adherence to the journal's Style Guide is required for accepted articles but is optional at the time of submission.
• Title, byline, and author affiliations should appear on the first page of the manuscripts.
• An abstract of 100 or fewer words is required.

Appendices

Manuscripts may include one or more in-paper appendices for technical proofs, derivations, and other material that can be separated from the main text but that is considered part of the paper. These appendices should begin on a new page following the text, preceding the references. They are typeset and edited and become a part of the total page count of the manuscript. 

Authors may submit a Supplemental Appendix that contains material such as nonessential extensions, nonessential alternative specifications or robustness checks, and additional discussion that will be of interest to those pursuing work in the area. Supplemental appendices are posted under "additional materials" and are not edited or typeset.

The paper (including any in-paper appendices) must be self-contained, in the sense that a reader can understand and evaluate the findings without consulting the Supplemental Appendix. All essential information, such as data sources, variable definitions, and methods (for empirical work) and proofs of the formal results (for theoretical work), must be included in the paper.

Submission Instructions

Once your submission materials have been prepared in accordance with these guidelines, please use the ScholarOne Manuscripts platform to submit your paper.

• A cover letter is not required and should only be used to provide substantive information, such as the identification of coeditors with which the author may have a personal conflict of interest. If a cover letter is included, we prefer to receive it in the provided form field rather than as a separate document.
• Each (co)author should prepare a separate PDF document entitled "Disclosure Statement," which must be provided with the manuscript. The disclosure statement should include the (co)author’s name and the title of the article. If an author has nothing to disclose, that fact should be explicitly stated in the disclosure statement. Submissions that do not include these statements will be considered incomplete and will not be reviewed.
• For research involving field experiments, authors must supply the AEA RCT identification number during the manuscript submission process and should include a citation of their registration in the acknowledgement footnote of the paper. Sample citation: This RCT was registered as AEARCTR-0000005 (Zhang 2017).

Papers Previously Submitted to the American Economic Review or AER: Insights

The AEJ: Applied Economics will consider papers previously reviewed by the American Economic Review or AER: Insights. In most cases, it is neither necessary nor recommended to revise the manuscript before submitting to AEJ: Applied Economics.

During the submission process, authors of manuscripts previously reviewed by these journals may request that the full correspondence files of the referees (including cover letters as well as referees' reports) be shared with the editors of the AEJ: Applied Economics, who will have the discretion to make a decision based on these reports or to request additional reports. When such a request is made, the editorial staff will contact each referee to obtain permission, and if it is granted, will forward all referee correspondence to the AEJ: Applied Economics editor. 

Response letters for manuscripts identical to the AER/AER: Insights manuscript:

Please submit a brief response letter to the editor (i.e., typically no more than 5 pages of text plus no more than 5 tables or figures) describing the main changes you would make to the paper in response to the main comments raised by the AER/AER: Insights referees if you were given the opportunity to revise the paper for the AEJ: Applied Economics. A detailed response letter to each referee is not required. 

Response letters for manuscripts changed from the AER/AER: Insights manuscript:

Please submit a response letter to the editor describing the changes you have made since the AER/AER: Insights version. If the changes you made were in response to the AER/AER: Insights referees, please also include response letters to them. Since these papers are different from the paper reviewed by the AER/AER: Insights referees, we expect that papers in this category are more likely to require additional refereeing before a possible decision to proceed at the AEJ: Applied Economics journal.

In either case, please upload the original AER/AER: Insights manuscript and choose the file designation 'Misc. (for review).'

For more information on the transfer option, see FAQ page.

Additional Information

• Authors have the option to use AEA Templates. If these templates are used, they should be used in "review mode."
• If you are using bibliographic software to prepare your reference list, we prefer that you use the "Chicago Manual Author-Date" style.
• Authors may opt to publish joint papers in random order of coauthors using the symbol ⓡ between author names.

If you have any questions, please contact the AEJ: Applied Economics Editorial Office at aejinfo@aeapubs.org or call 412-432-2300.