Semi-Daily Journal

I don't know about a *checklist*, but how about William Thomson's "A guide for the young economist" (MIT Press 2001). This is an expanded version of his 1999 JEL article. While it's best suited for theorists, I imagine that most economics grad students would learn a lot.

First item on the checklist: Find out who the referee is going to be, and cite everything he/she has ever written.

I believe this applies to all academic disciplines.

I find it even more effective to briefly cite the referee, and then trash the referee's own critics.

...Or, in the acknowledgements, thank a few Nobel prize winners you've never met for all of their help.

Perhaps it would be easier to make up a checklist of things not to do when writing an economics paper. Two might be "don't go to the Applied Mathematics department and look for a new mathematical technique and think 'how can this be applied to economics'; start by trying to solve an economics problem, not trying to use new techniques," or "don't forget to take basic economic variables like price into account, a peril especially prone to those who import theories from other social sciences into economics." (I originally heard these from Washington University (St. Louis) economist Marcus Berliant.)

I'm sure there are more on the checklist of how to avoid writing a bad paper, which might be easier than making a checklist on how to write an acceptable one.

Actually, the AM department trick works pretty well sometimes.

But, yes, at the end of the day suck up to the referee and trash his/her competitors. Of course, the problem with that strategy is you have to guess who the referee is - and, if you guess wrong you've done the opposite of what you intended.

So, suck up to the *EDITOR* and trash his/her competitors...

Well, it's certainly worth checking out Varian's "How to Build an Economic Model in your Spare Time".
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/how.pdf

Kwan Choi: How to Publish in Top Journals
http://www.ag.iastate.edu/journals/rie/how.htm

Michael Kremer has a checklist for grad students that I know I find useful: http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/kremer/papers/checklist.pdf

Wow, Kwan Choi's guide is right on the money, and a good reminder to me why I left grad school. My God, why would anyone put themselves through this?

Here's my take, thinking back to my own PhD student days:
Step 1: Think of a cool, generally intuitive idea about a real world economic puzzle, one that you can explain to your mother over the dinner hour. An example from my long-lost academic and student era would be, say, Akerlof's idea about why used cars sell at such a discount to new ones due to the "Market for Lemons" phenomenon. (It helps to have a catchy title if you can.)
Step 2: Translate that simple notion into the most complicated, generalized mathematical model you can given your math comptency. Don't use two periods if you can solve it for n periods. Have a model that applies as well to a Martian economy as opposed to just one on Earth. Don't both with any real world data (too time consuming to collect)- just make it up an call it a simulation.
Step 3: Write it up, skipping some steps along the way with phrases like: It follows that... etc., with lots of proofs of various lemmas stuffed into an impressive appendix.
Step 4: Write a concluding section that explains why all those pages of math end up saying what you told your mother over dinner. That gives the reader the enjoyment of saying "Oh... I get it".

Dear Harvard PhD
I have a problem with your proposal. My mother explained the market for lemons to me (before Akerlof published too). I think it produces higher quality than the applied math department stunt. Unfortunately, the applied math department often works.

I hate to write this where Julian Elson is reading because I vaguely remember that he is very young and very very smart and I hate to encourage cynicism (if I'm confusing you with someone else Julian -- sorry)

Very young: Well, I get the feeling that I'm one of the younger people here: eighteen years old, going on nineteen. I'm a college freshman.

Very very smart: I like to think so, but who doesn't?

I suppose it is unfortunate that a lot of economics stuff published to day is oriented toward applying techniques more than modeling new economic problems, but hey, no one said that the dismal science's dismality had to be found solely in the results of economists' work, and not in the nature of the discipline itself! (if I wanted to avoid cynical thoughts, I wouldn't be hanging around here, for one thing.)

Suggestion: read and understand Deirdre McCloskey's "Economical Writing" (the original in Economic Inquiry, or the book.) Two points to keep in mind. 1. Bad writing does not get read. 2. Ask "so what" after each sentence, as you review what you have written?

I'm not sure how you can anticipate who the referee is going to be. It doesn't hurt, if your work involves criticism of someone else's work, to keep your criticisms as professional as possible.

;)