Qe Rebuttal

Rebuttal & Revision (qe-rebuttal)

When to trigger

• A QE decision letter arrived: revise-and-resubmit, or a conditional/major revision
• You have referee reports and need a response strategy
• You are unsure how to prioritize conflicting referee demands
• The revised manuscript exists and you need to draft the response letter

QE reality: the coeditor's letter is the contract, and the clock runs ~12 months

At QE a handling coeditor owns the decision and synthesizes the referees (often including an Associate Editor). The coeditor's letter ranks the issues — it tells you which referee points are binding and which are optional; read it first and let it set priorities. Revise offers are normally valid for 12 months, so plan the analysis, estimation, and reproducibility work against that window rather than rushing a thin resubmission. Because QE is the empirical/quantitative ES journal, expect referees to probe identification, estimation, robustness, and reproducibility specifically — keep the public-posting and replication obligations in view as you revise.

Triage protocol

1. Decode the coeditor. A point the coeditor underscores is binding; a point only one referee raised and the coeditor ignored is lower priority (still answer it).
2. Classify every comment. Tag each: fundamental (must add/redo analysis or estimation), clarification (rewrite/explain), or disagreement (you will push back, politely, with evidence).
3. Sequence the work. Do the analysis first — route fundamentals to qe-identification-strategy, qe-data-analysis, or qe-tables-figures; update the replication package via qe-replication-and-data-policy; then write the letter.
4. Settle it with a check, not a fight. If a robustness check, an added moment, or a Monte Carlo settles the point, run it; reserve disagreement for where the referee is genuinely mistaken.

Response-letter structure

• Opening: thank the coeditor and referees; summarize the main changes in a short paragraph.
• Point-by-point: quote each comment, then respond — what you did + where in the revised paper it now appears (section/table/figure/page).
• Disagreements: state the referee's point fairly, then give the evidence-based reason you respectfully differ; offer a compromise (e.g., add to the Supplemental Appendix, ≤25 pages) where possible.
• Reproducibility: note any changes to data/code so the eventual ES Data Editor check stays clean.
• Tone: gracious, concrete, never defensive.

Checklist

• Coeditor's priorities decoded and used to rank responses
• Every referee comment classified (fundamental / clarification / disagreement)
• All fundamental requests resolved with actual new analysis/estimation, not promises
• Each response cites the exact location of the change in the revised paper
• Disagreements are evidence-based, fair, and offer a compromise
• Replication package and public posting updated to match the revision
• Revised manuscript updated before the letter was written
• No significance asterisks reintroduced; no new over-claiming

Anti-patterns

• Writing the response letter before the manuscript reflects the changes
• Promising future work instead of doing the analysis within the ~12-month window
• Arguing where an added moment / robustness check / Monte Carlo would settle it
• Letting the replication package drift out of sync with the revised results
• Defensive or curt tone; treating reports as attacks rather than help

The three QE pushbacks and what actually closes them

These are the recurring quantitative complaints at QE; each is closed by a specific, runnable response — not by prose.

Worked vignette: triaging a QE major-revision letter (illustrative)

Suppose the coeditor underscores Referee 1's identification concern, treats Referee 2's request for a robustness table as binding, and notes Referee 3's framing quibble as optional. Triage: tag identification fundamental (run the sensitivity matrix, route to qe-identification-strategy), tag the robustness table fundamental (re-estimate across three moment sets), tag the framing clarification (a paragraph rewrite). Suppose the headline elasticity moves from 0.42 to 0.39 (s.e. 0.05) across specifications — report that explicitly; a stable number under scrutiny is the strongest rebuttal. (Numbers illustrative.) Only after the manuscript reflects all three do you write the point-by-point letter with exact section/table locations.

Output format

【Decision】R&R / major / conditional
【Coeditor's binding points】[...]
【Comment classification】fundamental: [...] / clarification: [...] / disagreement: [...]
【Analysis routed to】qe-identification-strategy / qe-data-analysis / qe-tables-figures
【Letter status】point-by-point with locations? [Y/N]
【Reproducibility synced】package + posting updated? [Y/N]
【Next step】resubmit via the ES portal (qe-submission for file checks)

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → Quantitative-Economics-Skills/skills/qe-rebuttal/SKILL.md