brycewang-stanford JHE Workflow Router (jhe-workflow)
Overview
This is the router. It tells you which jhe- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the Journal of Health Economics (JHE) — Elsevier's field flagship for health economics. JHE publishes economic analyses that deepen understanding of the value, production, or distribution of health or healthcare: insurance design and demand, provider incentives and payment, healthcare markets and competition, medical technology and pharmaceuticals, health behaviors (smoking, obesity, addiction), health and human capital, health-policy evaluation, and health disparities. What earns space is credible causal identification fused with institutional health-system knowledge — a clean design that a referee who knows Medicaid, DRGs, or Part D would trust.
Operational tells that you are at JHE and not a sibling: submission is via Elsevier Editorial Manager (editorialmanager.com/jhlthec); review is single-anonymized (referees see authors — so anonymization is not a desk-reject trigger, unlike the AEA journals); the journal takes papers of any length and encourages short papers; the data/code policy is "encouraged," not a mandatory pre-publication openICPSR deposit (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准). Distinguish JHE from AJHE (ASHEcon/Chicago, US-health-policy-leaning), Journal of Public Economics (tax/transfer/public-finance core), Health Economics (Wiley, broader methods/measurement), and AEJ: Economic Policy (AEA policy generalist). JHE is the Elsevier field flagship — the question must be a health-economics question, not health as one application of a public-finance paper.
When to trigger
- The user asks "what should I do next?" on a JHE-targeted draft
- A draft's current bottleneck needs diagnosing
- Work is ping-ponging between design, institutions, exhibits, and the response letter
- A JHE decision letter arrived and the user needs to switch into revision mode
Routing table
| Current symptom | Next skill |
|---|---|
| Scope/fit unclear; is this health economics or a public-finance paper in disguise? | jhe-topic-selection |
| Contribution vs. the health-econ frontier is fuzzy or undersold | jhe-literature-positioning |
| Causal design (policy variation, eligibility RD, selection into insurance) is shaky | jhe-identification |
| A demand/insurance/provider model or its mechanism is loose | jhe-theory-model |
| Results may be specification-, sample-, or inference-fragile | jhe-robustness |
| Exhibits are dense; the health-policy result is hard to find | jhe-tables-figures |
| Prose buries the policy stakes; abstract/intro do not land | jhe-writing-style |
| Data deposit, restricted-data access path, code documentation needed | jhe-replication-package |
| Want to pre-empt likely referee objections before submission | jhe-referee-strategy |
| Ready to submit via Editorial Manager; need a preflight | jhe-submission |
| Received an R&R / decision letter; need a response-letter strategy | jhe-rebuttal |
Default order
jhe-topic-selection— lock the health-economics question and audiencejhe-literature-positioning— stake the contribution vs. the health-econ frontierjhe-identification— causal design or selection/identificationjhe-theory-model— the demand/insurance/provider model behind the estimatejhe-robustness— specification, sample, inference, mechanism stress testsjhe-tables-figures— exhibits that make the health-policy result legiblejhe-writing-style— make the policy stakes land (abstract + intro last)jhe-replication-package— assemble the deposit / restricted-data access pathjhe-referee-strategy— pre-mortem the likely health-econ objectionsjhe-submission— Editorial Manager preflightjhe-rebuttal— after the decision letter
jhe-writing-styleis a late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before identification and the headline estimate settle.
Routing by paper archetype
JHE spans several health-econ branches, and the binding constraint differs by branch. Read the archetype, then enter the chain at the right link.
| Archetype | Likely first bottleneck | Enter at |
|---|---|---|
| Insurance/coverage expansion (Medicaid/Medicare/exchange) | policy-variation design + spillovers to non-targeted margins | jhe-identification |
| Provider incentives / payment reform (DRG, P4P, ACO) | endogenous provider response + selection of patients | jhe-identification → jhe-theory-model |
| Health behaviors (tobacco, obesity, addiction) | tax/price variation credibility + externalities framing | jhe-identification → jhe-literature-positioning |
| Insurance demand / selection (structural) | what identifies risk preferences/adverse selection | jhe-theory-model → jhe-identification |
| Medical-technology / pharma diffusion | measurement + restricted claims-data access | jhe-identification → jhe-replication-package |
Worked routing example (illustrative)
A user says: "My Medicaid-expansion DiD looks fine, but a referee says the parallel-trends story is thin and the welfare interpretation overreaches what a coverage effect can show." Two distinct JHE pushbacks — design credibility (own jhe-identification: move past TWFE, honest-DID bounds, event-study leads) and overclaiming (own jhe-theory-model + jhe-writing-style: a coverage-take-up effect is not a health-production or welfare effect without the mapping). Route to jhe-identification first; only once the coverage estimate is stable (say it settles at 4.1pp take-up, s.e. 1.0, illustrative) do you return to frame the welfare claim honestly and re-present in jhe-tables-figures.
Minimal decision snippet
if decision_letter_arrived: -> jhe-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit: -> jhe-submission
elif want_to_pre-empt_referees: -> jhe-referee-strategy
elif data_or_code_needs_packaging: -> jhe-replication-package
elif prose_buries_the_stakes: -> jhe-writing-style
elif exhibits_hard_to_read: -> jhe-tables-figures
elif results_may_be_fragile: -> jhe-robustness
elif need_a_model_to_interpret: -> jhe-theory-model
elif design_or_selection_shaky: -> jhe-identification
elif contribution_fuzzy: -> jhe-literature-positioning
else: -> jhe-topic-selection
What this router does NOT do
It diagnoses the binding constraint and names the next skill; it does not run analysis, draft prose, or build exhibits — those live in the specialist skills. If the user's bottleneck spans two stages (e.g., a design fix that also changes the welfare claim), route to the earlier upstream skill first and let it hand off, rather than trying to resolve both here.
Anti-patterns
- Treating JHE like AJHE, JPubE, or Health Economics — wrong audience, wrong contribution test
- Submitting a public-finance or labor paper with health as a thin application
- Anonymizing as if review were double-blind (JHE is single-anonymized; wasted effort)
- Polishing prose before the design and headline estimate are stable
- Letting the appendix carry the institutional or identification claims the main text must establish
Output format
【Target】Journal of Health Economics (Elsevier field flagship)
【Current bottleneck】fit / contribution / design / model / robustness / exhibits / style / package / submission / revision
【Archetype】coverage / provider-incentive / health-behavior / selection-structural / medtech
【Next skill】<one jhe-* skill>
【Reason】why this is the binding constraint now
【Source check】official facts verified or marked 待核实