Instructions for Submitting Articles

To submit to Quantitative Economics, you must be a member of the Econometric Society.

This page describes the instructions for submitting papers to Quantitative Economics.
View the instructions for preparing papers for publication in Quantitative Economics.
View the current editorial procedures and policies of Quantitative Economics.

Key Instructions: Papers must be submitted as pdf files; the size of the text font must be at least 12 point and the spacing should be 1.5 or double spaced. Please include each figure and table on the relevant page in the paper; do not collect figures and tables at the end of the paper. The list of references should appear after any appendices, at the very end of the paper.

Format
Cover Note
Econometrica Transfers
Replication Policy
Experimental Submissions
Supplemental Material
Fees
Decision Process
Other Instructions

1. FORMAT

Papers should be submitted electronically in PDF format, preferably without a cover letter.

It is recommended, though not required, that authors use the LaTex template, available from the journal's support page for LaTex at https://www.e-publications.org/es/support/ . In exceptional cases, those who are unable to submit electronic files in PDF format can submit one copy of a paper prepared according to these guidelines by mail addressed to our Editor’s office (including, if possible, media containing an electronic version of the paper).

Papers should be formatted to be easily readable.

Submitted manuscripts should be formatted for paper of standard size with (i) margins of at least 1.25 inch on all sides, (ii) 1-1/2 spaced text in 12 point font, (iii) no more than 32 lines per page. Material should be organized to maximize readability, for example footnotes, figures, etc., should not be placed at the end. The 12pt font and spacing apply to the entire manuscript, including references, appendices.

Authors may include a Supplemental Appendix with submission. Such an appendix should be clearly labeled (``Supplemental Appendix’’). Such a Supplemental Appendix should not exceed 25 pages. Appendices are for additional results and robustness analyses that are not central to the main paper. They are not for proofs of the key results. It is important that the main paper should be self-contained.

Pages should be numbered, and an abstract (of no more than 150 words), as well as keywords and complete author affiliations, should be included in the paper in the title page. (JEL numbers are optional.)

2. COVER NOTE

A letter of submission need not be included unless it contains information pertinent to the review process. If the author has submitted related work elsewhere, or does so during the term in which Quantitative Economics is considering the manuscript, then it is the author's responsibility to provide Quantitative Economics with details. If the submission is on a topic related to earlier rejected submission to Quantitative Economics, the author should describe the relation and explain why he/she believes it is sufficient distinct to merit independent review.

3. ECONOMETRICA TRANSFERS

The editorial process at Quantitative Economics is completely independent of that at Econometrica. However, if your paper has been previously rejected by Econometrica, in our submission process you have the option of requesting the transfer of the coeditor's decision letter, referees' reports, and referees' covering letters directly from Econometrica to us. (This transfer is completely optional. Not revealing that you previously submitted your paper to Econometrica is perfectly fine.) Note there is a presumption that we will consult referees different from the ones consulted by the Econometrica coeditor. If you do request the reports be transferred from Econometrica, then you must provide a cover letter describing how your submission differs from the paper reviewed by Econometrica and, in detail, how you have responded to the referees' comments. If we use the same referees, your description of your responses will be forwarded to them. Submission fees are waived for transfers from Econometrica; all other fees associated with publication apply.

4. REPLICATION POLICY

The Econometric Society (ES) and its journals, Econometrica, Quantitative Economics, and Theoretical Economics, have the policy to publish papers that include empirical, experimental, and/or simulation results only if the data and code used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and the raw data and code can be made available in the public replication files.

Authors of these papers must provide, prior to acceptance, raw data, codes, and sufficient documentation to permit the replication of all the results in the paper and in the appendices approved for publication online. They must also provide sufficient information to replicate the process of obtaining this raw data from the original sources and cite all the sources of data appropriately.

The journals of the ES will conduct reproducibility checks for the empirical, experimental, and/or simulation results included in the paper and in the approved online appendices prior to final acceptance.

Requests for an exemption from providing the materials described in this policy, or for restricting their usage, should be stated clearly when the paper is first submitted for review. It will be at the editors' discretion whether the paper can then be reviewed. Exceptions will not be considered later in the review and publication process.

By submitting to any journal of the Econometric Society, authors indicate their acceptance of this Data and Code Availability Policy.

The the Econometric Society and its journals Econometrica, Quantitative Economics, and Theoretical Economics endorse DCAS, the Data and Code Availability Standard [v1.0], and its data and code availability policy is compatible with DCAS.

The specific terms and implementation of the Econometric Society's Policy may be found at the Data Editor Website.

5. EXPERIMENTAL PAPERS

Information about experimental procedures is relevant to the decision of whether or not to publish a paper reporting results from laboratory and field experiments and researcher conducted surveys. Detailed information of this type is also valuable to scholars who subsequently do related work or attempt to replicate results. Therefore, author(s) of such manuscripts should include with their submission sufficient material on the procedures to enable review. If accepted, additional material to facilitate replication and follow up analysis will be expected, and will be made available through the Quantitative Economics website. During the submission process, all this material will be password protected and available only to the editor and referees evaluating the manuscript with the understanding that the material will be used for the sole purpose of evaluating the submitted paper (and not, e.g., for research purposes). Examples of material to be included upon submission and upon acceptance are described below. Any impediments to providing such material at the acceptance stage should be indicated upon the initial submission. For manuscripts that are rejected, supplementary material will be removed if the author requests it.

Important procedural aspects should be explained at the submission stage (either in the body of the paper or an appendix as is appropriate for the particular paper and aspects). We leave the decision on what details to initially include to the author. If during the review process the editor or referees feel additional information is needed, requests for that material will be made, and may naturally cause delay in processing, hence we encourage as complete a submission as feasible.

If any accompanying materials, such as experimental instructions, are not written in English, then a translation should be provided.

Suggested information to provide for the review process:

The subject pool and recruiting procedures.
The experimental technology – when and where the experiments were conducted; by computer or manually; online, and so forth.
Any procedures to test for comprehension before running the experiment, including the use of practice trials and quizzes.
Matching procedures, especially for game theory experiments.
Subject payments, including whether artificial currency was used, the exchange rate, show-up fees, average earnings, lotteries and/or grades.
The number of subjects used in each session and, where relevant, their experience.
Timing, such as how long a typical session lasted, and how much of that time was instructional.
Any use of deception and/or any instructional inaccuracies.

Additional information for publication on the supplementary website

A detailed appendix is required to facilitate replications and data analysis and should consist of whatever can be provided for these purposes. This will include further detail on the items above, and provision of original materials. The following are items that are desirable and typically expected, but further detail about what is needed in each case can be obtained from the coeditor handling the paper.

Detailed statement of protocols.
Samples of permission forms and record sheets.
Copies of instructions and slides and/or transparencies used to present instructions.
Source code for computer programs used to conduct the experiment and to analyze the data. This does not include compilers (such as ztree) that are publicly available.
Screen shots showing how the programs are used.
The experimental data together with adequate documentation of the format.

Reasonable judgment should be used. For example, if instructions for different sessions differ only slightly, then one sample of the instructions suffices, with the differences noted in a short accompanying document. These rules should be understood also to apply to surveys conducted by the authors. When the authors are not the primary source of the data, we require only the data, a statement of where it came from and the programs used to process it – detailed documentation of the procedures used by the original data providers about how it was collected is not required.

We understand that there may be a need for exceptions to the policy for confidentiality or other reasons. When this is the case, it must be clearly stated at the time of submission that certain data or other appendix materials cannot or will not be made available, and an explanation provided. Such exceptions require prior approval by the editors.

6. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

In addition to regularly published material in the journal, Quantitative Economics also posts supplementary material with its publications. It includes material to enable replication of empirical, experimental and simulation results as well as extensions of more narrow interest and other material related to papers that appear in the journal.

Supplementary material is handled as a regular part of the editorial process. As described in our Replication Policy at the Society's Data Editor website, providing supplementary material to enable replication of empirical and experimental work is mandatory. In some other cases, as part of the process of publication, the Editor may also require that certain additional material be published on the website. If you wish to have part of your submission appear as supplementary material, you should make this known to the Editor handling your manuscript, who has final discretion over whether the material will be included on the website.

Supplementary files can be submitted with the main paper via the on-line submission form. Large files should be compressed to .zip format. Currently the on-line submission facility only enables two attachments, so if more than two files are being submitted they would have to be submitted in a single .zip file containing a directory with all submitted files.

Licensing: Programs, data and experimental instructions are licensed by authors to be available to users to download, copy, and modify. In doing so they must acknowledge all authors as the original creators. If you have a compelling reason we may post restrictions regarding such usage.

7. FEES

To submit a paper, at least one of the authors of the paper has to be a member of the Econometric Society. If none of the authors is a member of the Econometric Society, please join at http://www.econometricsociety.org/users/register

A submission fee of US$100 for regular members and US$50 for student members applies to all new submissions. Only membership is required of invited resubmissions as well as papers previously reviewed by Econometrica and submitted for transfer to Quantitative Economics with their Econometrica decision letter and reports. Submission fees must be paid by credit card at the time of submission.

Individuals residing in countries classified as low-income by the World Bank are exempt from the submission fee. The list of those countries can be found here under the heading LOW-INCOME ECONOMIES.

Papers rejected without review will not be refunded their submission fee.

A publication fee is currently set at 50% the cost of production per page.

Specifically, accepted papers will incur a fixed per page fee for any typeset material, including any approved supplemental appendices. The publication fee will be collected after final proofs but before publication and invoiced at the then-prevailing rate. Any paper submitted before September 1, 2020, will be exempt from the publication fee.

Authors of accepted papers residing in countries classified as either low-income or lower-middle income by the World Bank may request an exemption from the publication fee. The list of those countries can be found here under the headings LOW-INCOME ECONOMIES and LOWER-MIDDLE INCOME ECONOMIES

If you have any questions, please contact the Editorial Office at [email protected]

8. DECISION PROCESS

Manuscripts may be rejected, returned for specified revision, or accepted.

Revisions are, in general, of two forms: those cases where the editors see potential promise, but cannot identify even likely conditions for acceptance, and those where the editors have a better sense of the potential paper they would like to see. We aim to provide specific suggestions, but obviously will be more successful only in the latter case. In the former case, the likelihood for significant further revision is high.

An offer to revise a paper is normally valid for 12 months after a decision is issued. Extensions can be granted to authors at the discretion of the handling editor but must be requested within the 12 months.

The decision letter regarding the revisions provides as much detail as the editor is capable of providing. We ask that authors not contact us for further advice, or send us outlines for suggested revisions, or even “tentative” revisions. We will review revisions upon resubmission only.

Unless the coeditor specifies otherwise, decisions are final. Unsolicited revisions of rejected papers will normally be rejected without review.

9. OTHER INSTRUCTIONS

Submissions must be publicly available: Authors must post their submission on a publicly available website. (Editors may grant exceptions to this policy.)

Similarity Check: In an effort to prevent plagiarism, the Econometric Society subscribes to Similarity Check to screen its submissions. Similarity Check has a "database of current and archival scholarly literature" and uses the iThenticate tool to "compare authored work against the content in the database and highlight matching or similar text for further editorial review." Submission to ES journals implies permission of the Society to check the submission electronically for plagiarism, using the Similarity Check system.

Registry for Randomized Controlled Trials: The American Economic Association operates a Registry for Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs). The journal encourages authors of papers that use RCTs to register their experiments. Registration of RCTs is not mandatory. Registration is free. If you choose to register, please acknowledge registration in the acknowledgement footnote, including the registration number.

Certified Random Order: Econometric Society journals do not permit the use of \textcircled{r} to indicate that authors have been selected according to certified random order. Authors are free to indicate their relative contributions and the methods that they used to determine author order in a footnote. Citations to articles in the text and references will strive to respect the designation of authors and author order used by those articles.

Copyright: Quantitative Economics is an Open Access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution.

Authors who publish in Quantitative Economics will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given. For details of the rights authors grant users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in Quantitative Economics. Authors must post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.

For Sherpa/Romeo questions please consult here.

Revisions: Balancing our reputation for careful evaluation of papers with the need to provide authors with faster turnaround is a continuing priority. An offer to revise a paper is normally valid for 12 months after a decision is issued. Extensions can be granted to authors at the discretion of the handling editor but must be requested within the 12 months.

General writing advice: Avoid definitions in the first paragraphs or pages; try to avoid formulae and specialized terminology in the introduction. Write crisply but clearly. Avoiding grammatical and notational errors, though important, is only the first step. Good writing, especially good mathematical writing, calls for something more: the extra effort involved in revising and reworking the manuscript until it will be clear to most if not all of our readers. For a good test of the "readability" of a paper, the comments of a colleague in another specialty should alert you to problems in comprehension which our readers might face. Please do not use asterisks or bold face to denote statistical significance. We encourage authors to report standard errors and coverage sets or confidence intervals.

Quantitative Economics

Journal Of The Econometric Society