AER: Insights Workflow Router (aeri-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which aeri- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at American Economic Review: Insights (AER: Insights) — the AEA's short-format, general-interest journal (founded 2019) for papers built around ONE clear, important, well-executed idea, empirical, theoretical, or methodological. The bar is AER-level importance compressed into a short paper. AER: Insights is the short sibling of the American Economic Review (long, multi-result, flagship) and is general-interest, unlike the field-oriented full papers of the AEJ family.

Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as AER: Insights. The two operational tells that you are at AER: Insights and not AER or an AEJ: (1) a hard length cap — main text ≤7,000 words with no exhibits, minus 200 words per exhibit, maximum five exhibits, abstract ≤100 words — papers over the cap are returned unreviewed; (2) a single insight must carry the whole paper, with everything secondary pushed to the online Supplemental Appendix. Process tells: AEA single-blind review that is fast and decisive — no traditional revise-and-resubmit; first decisions are conditional accept or reject, and conditional accepts (usually an 8-week window) are normally not sent back to referees. Editor as of 2026: Matthew Gentzkow (lead editor beginning January 2024; founding editor Amy Finkelstein). Live-check volatile specifics on the official AEA pages.

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?"
• A draft is over the word/exhibit cap or is sprawling into multiple results
• Work is ping-ponging between the core result, framing, exhibits, and the response letter
• An AER: Insights decision letter (conditional accept or reject) arrived

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
Paper has several results / no single crisp insight; fit to short format unclear	aeri-topic-selection
Contribution vs. the closest published work is fuzzy or oversold	aeri-literature-positioning
The causal or parameter identification is shaky	aeri-identification
A model is present but bloated, or unclear what it must minimally show	aeri-theory-model
Robustness is sprawling; unclear what stays in-text vs. appendix	aeri-robustness
Over the five-exhibit budget; exhibits are dense or carry significance asterisks	aeri-tables-figures
Prose buries the result; abstract/intro do not lead with it; over word cap	aeri-writing-style
Data/code deposit, README, or AEA Data Editor prep	aeri-replication-package
Want to understand the fast review / conditional-accept-vs-reject odds	aeri-referee-strategy
Ready to submit via the AEA portal; need a preflight	aeri-submission
Received a conditional accept; need a short, decisive response	aeri-rebuttal

Default order

1. aeri-topic-selection — confirm ONE crisp, important, well-identified insight that stands alone
2. aeri-literature-positioning — stake the contribution in one or two paragraphs
3. aeri-identification — make the design or parameter identification clean and self-contained
4. aeri-theory-model — keep only the model the single insight requires
5. aeri-robustness — the few in-text checks that matter; rest to the appendix
6. aeri-tables-figures — at most five exhibits, no significance asterisks
7. aeri-writing-style — lead with the result; enforce the word budget (abstract + intro last)
8. aeri-replication-package — assemble the AEA-compliant data/code package
9. aeri-referee-strategy — calibrate expectations for the fast, decisive process
10. aeri-submission — AEA portal preflight (word count + exhibit count)
11. aeri-rebuttal — after the conditional accept

aeri-writing-style is a late-stage polish, but the word cap is a constraint from day one — track it throughout, not at the end.

Anti-patterns

• Treating AER: Insights like a short AER: keeping a second and third result instead of cutting to one
• Letting aeri-tables-figures polish a sixth exhibit that should not exist
• Skipping aeri-replication-package until acceptance — the AEA Data Editor checks before publication
• Planning for a multi-round R&R that AER: Insights does not offer

Routing by paper archetype

The single insight differs by archetype; enter the chain at the right link.

Archetype	Likely first bottleneck	Enter at
one clean causal estimate (DiD / RDD / IV / experiment)	is the design credible AND is it a single headline number?	aeri-topic-selection → aeri-identification
a sharp theoretical result / impossibility	is the model minimal and the result surprising?	aeri-theory-model
a methodological point with one application	does the method change a substantive answer in few pages?	aeri-identification → aeri-robustness
a striking new fact / measurement	is the fact important enough to stand alone, and robust?	aeri-topic-selection → aeri-robustness

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My field experiment has a clean main effect, but I also estimated three heterogeneity splits and a structural extension, and the draft is 9,500 words." That is the canonical AER: Insights problem — one good insight buried under a multi-result, over-cap paper. Route first to aeri-topic-selection to confirm the single headline effect is the paper, then aeri-robustness and aeri-tables-figures to move the heterogeneity and the structural extension to the Supplemental Appendix, then aeri-writing-style to land the draft under the 7,000-word (minus exhibits) cap.

Minimal decision snippet

if decision_letter_arrived:          -> aeri-rebuttal
elif ready_to_submit:                -> aeri-submission
elif over_cap_or_too_many_exhibits:  -> aeri-tables-figures / aeri-writing-style
elif robustness_sprawling:           -> aeri-robustness
elif model_bloated:                  -> aeri-theory-model
elif identification_shaky:           -> aeri-identification
elif contribution_fuzzy:             -> aeri-literature-positioning
else:                                -> aeri-topic-selection