A skill your agent uses when deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER, AEJ: Economic Policy, or a field…

MITAuto-check passedResearch & Science

Install Aeja Topic Selection

skills CLI
$ npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aeja-topic-selection -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills aeja-topic-selection --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/AEJ-Applied-Economics-Skills/skills/aeja-topic-selection .claude/skills/aeja-topic-selection && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
aeja-topic-selection
GitHub stars
1.2k
Token cost
~1.3k tokens
SKILL.md length
635 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
2,387
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER, AEJ: Economic Policy, or a field…

  • Works in 4 steps: One-sentence question with the causal… → Why broad applied-micro readers care —… → What the headline number will be (a… → …
  • Deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER
  • SKILL.md covers When to trigger, The AEJ: Applied fit test, Sharpening the question (do… and Checklist, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Aeja Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER, AEJ: Economic Policy, or a field journal, and what its central question should be. Sets venue fit and question scope; it does not design the identification (see aeja-identification).

Its SKILL.md is about 1.3k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Research & Science, covering Econometrics and empirical research. The repository describes itself as: Journal-specific Claude Code/Codex skill packs covering mainstream journals — AER, QJE, Nature, Cell, 管理世界, 经济研究 & 200+ more — your fast track to getting published. | 覆盖主流期刊的… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER
  • AEJ: Economic Policy
  • A field journal
  • What its central question should be

Example prompts

  • “/aeja-topic-selection”

Workflow steps

4 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. One-sentence question with the causal object named: "What is the effect of X on Y for population P, identified by design D?"
  2. Why broad applied-micro readers care — name two subfields beyond your own that should cite it.
  3. What the headline number will be (a magnitude with units, even if approximate) — if you cannot imagine the sentence "we find X raises Y by…
  4. The credible-design seed — which design (RCT / DID / RD / IV / shift-share) makes the estimate believable; if none, the topic is not ready…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 932eb23. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Aeja Topic Selection loads about 1.3k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 87 tokens; SKILL.md has 635 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~87
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.3k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills at commit 932eb23, republished under its MIT licence (© brycewang-stanford). 635 words, ~1,300 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/aeja-topic-selection/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
aeja-topic-selection
description
Use when deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER, AEJ: Economic Policy, or a field journal, and what its central question should be. Sets venue fit and question scope; it does not design the identification (see aeja-identification).

Topic Selection & Venue Fit (aeja-topic-selection)

When to trigger

  • A project is empirically promising but you are unsure it is "AEJ: Applied-shaped"
  • The question reads like a policy evaluation, a field-specialist note, or a top-general-interest swing — and you need to place it
  • Several possible framings of the same dataset exist and you must pick the one that lands here
  • Reviewers (or a co-author) say "this is fine but why this journal?"

The AEJ: Applied fit test

AEJ: Applied wants empirical applied microeconomics where a credible causal research design answers a substantive economic question of broad applied-micro interest — above a pure field journal but more specialized than AER. Use this decision table to place the project.

Signal in your projectLikely fit
Clean identification + a question labor/dev/health/ed/public economists all care aboutAEJ: Applied (core)
Same design but the contribution is mainly a policy verdict / program ROI framinglean AEJ: Economic Policy
Genuinely general-interest, agenda-setting, methodologically ambitious, longaim AER first
Contribution is field-internal (only sub-field specialists will cite it)a field journal (JHE / JOLE / JDE)
New estimator with a toy applicationEconometrica / REStud / JoE, not AEJ: Applied

AEJ: Applied is empirical-first: theory appears to interpret and discipline the estimate, not to lead. A descriptive or measurement paper can fit if the question is sharp and the measurement is the contribution — but it must not overclaim causality.

Sharpening the question (do this before writing anything)

  1. One-sentence question with the causal object named: "What is the effect of X on Y for population P, identified by design D?"
  2. Why broad applied-micro readers care — name two subfields beyond your own that should cite it.
  3. What the headline number will be (a magnitude with units, even if approximate) — if you cannot imagine the sentence "we find X raises Y by ___," the question is not yet AEJ: Applied-shaped.
  4. The credible-design seed — which design (RCT / DID / RD / IV / shift-share) makes the estimate believable; if none, the topic is not ready (route to aeja-identification).

Checklist

  • One-sentence causal (or sharply descriptive) question with a named estimand
  • Venue placed against the table above; reason it is AEJ: Applied and not AER / AEJ: Policy / a field journal written in one line
  • Two subfields beyond your own that will cite it, named
  • An imaginable headline sentence with a magnitude and units
  • A candidate research design that could make the estimate credible
  • JEL codes drafted (required at submission) reflecting the cross-field appeal
Show full SKILL.md (233 more words)Show less

Anti-patterns

  • A field-internal contribution dressed up as general — desk-reject risk for "fit"
  • A pure policy-ROI framing that reads as AEJ: Economic Policy
  • An ambitious agenda paper that is really an AER swing sent to AEJ: Applied as a hedge (or vice versa)
  • "Interesting dataset, no question" — data-availability is not a contribution
  • Implying causality from a design that cannot support it just to clear the bar

Worked vignette (illustrative)

A researcher has linked administrative tax and education records for one country and wants to "study inequality." That is a dataset, not a question. Working through the fit test: the cleanest variation in the data is a school-finance reform that changed per-pupil spending at a sharp formula threshold — an RD. The question becomes "what is the effect of marginal school spending on adult earnings, identified by the funding-formula discontinuity?" Two subfields beyond education (labor and public) will cite it; the imaginable headline is "a $1,000 increase in per-pupil spending raises adult earnings by ~___%." Now it is AEJ: Applied-shaped — and clearly not an AER agenda paper or an AEJ: Policy program verdict.

Sibling-placement quick test

  • Would a non-specialist applied economist find the question interesting, not just the finding? → AEJ: Applied
  • Is the deliverable a policy recommendation / cost-benefit verdict? → lean AEJ: Economic Policy
  • Is the ambition field-defining and the design unusually novel? → try AER first
  • Will only sub-field specialists ever cite it? → a field journal

Output format

【Question】one sentence, estimand + population named
【Venue verdict】AEJ: Applied because [not AER: ___] [not AEJ: Policy: ___] [not field: ___]
【Cross-field appeal】subfields that will cite: [..., ...]
【Headline (anticipated)】"X raises/lowers Y by ~___ (units)"
【Design seed】RCT / DID / RD / IV / shift-share / descriptive
【JEL draft】[codes]
【Next step】aeja-literature-positioning

© brycewang-stanford, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in AEJ-Applied-Economics-Skills/skills/aeja-topic-selection of brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 932eb23

Compare with similar skills

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Aeja Topic Selection compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
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Stata C Pluginsdylantmoore/stata-skill2911 repos~5.8kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Example Datasetspymc-labs/CausalPy1.2k—~587Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Stata AuditSepineTam/mcp-for-stata264—~1.2kAutomated safety check: PassAGPL-3.0
Stata Skill Contributordylantmoore/stata-skill2911 repos~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence

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Questions about Aeja Topic Selection

What does Aeja Topic Selection do?

A skill your agent uses when deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER, AEJ: Economic Policy, or a field…. Aeja Topic Selection is an agent skill from brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills. Use when deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER, AEJ: Economic Policy, or a field journal, and what its central question should be.

When should I use Aeja Topic Selection?

Aeja Topic Selection fits situations like: deciding whether an applied-micro project belongs at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (AEJ: Applied) rather than AER; AEJ: Economic Policy; A field journal; what its central question should be.

How do I install Aeja Topic Selection in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aeja-topic-selection -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (AEJ-Applied-Economics-Skills/skills/aeja-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .claude/skills/aeja-topic-selection in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Aeja Topic Selection in Codex?

Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aeja-topic-selection -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (AEJ-Applied-Economics-Skills/skills/aeja-topic-selection in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills) into .agents/skills/aeja-topic-selection in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Aeja Topic Selection in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill aeja-topic-selection -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/aeja-topic-selection, .gemini/skills/aeja-topic-selection, .github/skills/aeja-topic-selection and .opencode/skills/aeja-topic-selection in your project.

What does Aeja Topic Selection need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Aeja Topic Selection is instructions for the agent only.

Does Aeja Topic Selection access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Aeja Topic Selection safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Aeja Topic Selection use?

Aeja Topic Selection is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Aeja Topic Selection use?

About 1.3k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.2k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Aeja Topic Selection?

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Who maintains Aeja Topic Selection?

brycewang-stanford (a GitHub user) maintains it in brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, which has 1,219 GitHub stars. The repository holds 2,387 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 27, 2026.

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.