brycewang-stanford Economic Policy Workflow Router (ecopol-workflow)
Overview
This is the router. It tells you which ecopol- skill to use at the current stage* of a paper aimed at Economic Policy — the CEPR / CESifo / Sciences Po (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques) policy-economics journal published by Oxford University Press. EP's identity is European, policy-first, and accessible: rigorous analysis of a current policy question written so that economists and policymakers can read it, with the heavy machinery pushed to an appendix.
What makes EP unlike any sibling is its lifecycle. EP does not run standard anonymous refereeing. Papers are selected by the Managing Editor / Panel, presented at the journal's biannual conference (summer and winter), where two invited discussants debate each paper from an academic and a policy angle and act as the referees. The final paper is published together with the discussants' comments and a summary of the panel discussion, within ~6 months of presentation (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Since the 2025 relaunch as Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues, the journal is online-only and commissioned — "all articles are invited by the Managing Editor"; unsolicited submissions are not accepted (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Treat ecopol-submission as the pitch / commissioning + camera-ready route, not an open portal.
Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, the target is EP and the bottleneck is "will the Panel want this, and will it survive two discussants in front of a policy audience?"
When to trigger
- The user asks "what should I do next?" on an EP-bound paper
- A draft's current bottleneck (fit, framing, evidence, exhibits, prose) needs diagnosing
- Work is ping-ponging between the policy question, the identification, the writing, and the discussant-proofing
- A commissioning invitation or a post-panel revision request arrived and the user must switch modes
Routing table
| Current symptom | Next skill |
|---|---|
| Not clearly a timely, important policy question the Panel would commission | ecopol-topic-selection |
| Contribution vs. the policy debate / adjacent journals is fuzzy | ecopol-literature-positioning |
| Causal or structural credibility is the binding constraint | ecopol-identification |
| The mechanism / model that organizes the policy logic is loose | ecopol-theory-model |
| Results may be specification-, sample-, or inference-fragile | ecopol-robustness |
| Exhibits are too technical for a policy reader or don't carry the message | ecopol-tables-figures |
| Main text reads like a tech report, not accessible policy prose | ecopol-writing-style |
| Data / code package and verification material need assembling | ecopol-replication-package |
| Need to anticipate the two discussants and the panel debate | ecopol-referee-strategy |
| Camera-ready / commissioning logistics need a final check | ecopol-submission |
| A post-panel / discussant revision request needs a response plan | ecopol-rebuttal |
Default order
ecopol-topic-selection— lock a timely, Panel-worthy policy questionecopol-literature-positioning— stake the contribution to the live policy debateecopol-identification— make the data-to-policy-claim mapping credibleecopol-theory-model— the minimal model that disciplines the policy logicecopol-robustness— pre-empt the discussants' fragility testsecopol-tables-figures— exhibits a minister could readecopol-writing-style— accessible main text, technical appendix (do this late)ecopol-replication-package— verification-ready data + codeecopol-referee-strategy— war-game the two discussants + panelecopol-submission— commissioning / camera-ready preflightecopol-rebuttal— revise after the panel and discussant comments
ecopol-writing-styleis late polish; do not rewrite the intro before the identification and the headline policy number settle.
Routing by paper archetype
The discussant duo and panel debate hit different papers at different seams. Read the archetype, enter the chain at the right link.
| Archetype | Likely first bottleneck | Enter at |
|---|---|---|
| empirical causal evaluation of a policy | staggered-DID / weak-IV credibility under a hostile discussant | ecopol-identification |
| structural / quantitative policy model | what identifies parameters + counterfactual policy-invariance | ecopol-theory-model → ecopol-identification |
| macro / fiscal / monetary policy analysis | timeliness + the central policy number's robustness | ecopol-topic-selection → ecopol-robustness |
| cross-country / EU-institutional study | comparability of data + the "so what for European policy" | ecopol-literature-positioning |
Worked routing example (illustrative)
A user says: "We were invited to present a paper on an EU minimum-wage directive at the winter conference; one likely discussant is a labor economist, the other sits in a finance ministry." That is the EP-specific bottleneck — survive two discussants from two worlds. The labor discussant will press identification (ecopol-identification) and robustness (ecopol-robustness); the ministry discussant will press the headline magnitude, the welfare/cost framing, and whether a non-economist can read it (ecopol-tables-figures, ecopol-writing-style). Route to ecopol-referee-strategy to map both personas, then to the two technical skills they will probe.
Anti-patterns
- Treating EP like a journal with an open submission portal and anonymous referees — it is commissioned, panel-reviewed, with named discussants
- Polishing prose before identification and the central policy number are stable
- Confusing EP with AEJ: Economic Policy (AEA, anonymous refereeing, more technical), Brookings Papers (the US panel analogue), or Journal of Public Economics (field journal, no panel)
- Letting the technical appendix carry a claim the accessible main text must make to a policymaker
Minimal decision snippet
if post_panel_revision: -> ecopol-rebuttal
elif commissioned_camera_ready: -> ecopol-submission
elif facing_the_two_discussants: -> ecopol-referee-strategy
elif exhibits_too_technical: -> ecopol-tables-figures
elif results_fragile: -> ecopol-robustness
elif identification_shaky: -> ecopol-identification
elif model_loose: -> ecopol-theory-model
elif contribution_fuzzy: -> ecopol-literature-positioning
else: -> ecopol-topic-selection