econ-referee¶
A short pre-submission referee workflow for accounting, finance and economics papers. Its iron law is that every major comment cites a page, table or figure, and any claim the manuscript cannot support is marked Unverified, never invented. It classifies the paper, locates the contribution sentence, and audits in a fixed order that stops early only on a fatal flaw. It adds accounting- and finance-specific flags and venue checklists (JAR/TAR/JAE, JF/JFE/RFS, AEA) and always delivers three outputs: substance comments, separate editing notes and a prioritized revision plan. Self-declared original rather than a fork of the PolyForm-noncommercial OpenEcon referee.
reviewMIT (repo LICENSE, "Copyright (c) 2026 John Barrios"). The vendored third-party skills keep their own terms: the Anthropic document skills say "Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms", and the K-Dense skills carry per-library licence lines.referee-simulation
Barrios Skills — John Barrios's curated workflow for economists and accountants. Prioritize reproducible empirical work, clear identification language, and journal-ready output.
Econ / finance / accounting pre-submission referee¶
John Barrios's compact referee workflow. Inspired by the idea of verified, revision-ready AI refereeing in the OpenEcon ecosystem, but written for this collection (MIT) with an accounting and finance lens — not a fork of the PolyForm-Noncommercial econ-paper-review-skill.
When to use¶
- Stress-test a working paper before journal submission
- Produce a referee-style report the author can act on
- Separate substance (identification, inference, contribution) from editing (clarity, typos)
After the judgment is settled, use econ-write + econ-humanizer to implement revisions.
Iron law: every major comment cites evidence¶
Do not invent table numbers, coefficients, or sample sizes. If the PDF/manuscript does not support the claim, mark Unverified and ask for the exhibit.
Format substance comments as:
[Severity: Critical|Major|Minor] [Topic: Identification|Inference|Data|Contribution|Clarity]
Location: §X / Table Y / Figure Z (p. N if known)
Issue: ...
Why it matters for this literature: ...
Concrete fix: ...
Workflow¶
1. Classify the paper¶
- Empirical reduced-form / archival accounting / asset pricing / banking / macro / theory / structural / mixed
- Claimed identification (DiD, IV, RDD, bunching, event study, disclosure mandate, etc.)
- Target venue band if the user names one (e.g. JAR vs JAE vs JF)
2. Read for the contribution sentence¶
Write the paper's one-sentence contribution in the author's terms, then in your own skeptical terms. If these diverge, that is Comment #1.
3. Audit in this order (stop early only if fatal)¶
- Research integrity — results match text; no silent sample changes across tables
- Design / identification — parallel trends, exclusion, bandwidth, disclosure timing, etc.
- Inference — clustering, multiple testing, weak IV, staggered DiD estimator choice
- Data construction — Compustat filters, winsorization, look-ahead, delisting, CIK merges
- Economic magnitude — is the effect sized in interpretable units?
- Literature / novelty — relative to the frontier the paper cites
- Presentation — only after substance
4. Accounting- and finance-specific flags¶
| Field | Recurring issues |
|---|---|
| Archival accounting | Measurement of accruals/quality; within-GAAP discretion vs real effects; disclosure vs recognition; auditor/office clustering |
| Corporate finance | Endogenous policy; bad controls (collider); industry×year FE debates; CEO vs firm clustering |
| Asset pricing | Multiple testing; tradability; microstructure; anomaly t-stats vs Sharpe |
| Banking / intermediation | Regulatory timing; call-report breaks; call vs market data mismatch |
| Governance / ESG | Construct validity; boilerplate NLP; selection into disclosure |
5. Deliverables (always produce all three)¶
A. Referee report (1–2 pages)
- Summary paragraph (contribution + verdict tone)
- Main comments (numbered, verified)
- Minor comments
- Overall recommendation language suitable for private pre-submission use (Accept/R&R/Reject as a forecast, clearly labeled as advisory)
B. Editing notes (separate)
- Clarity, structure, notation — not mixed into substance comments
C. Revision plan
| Priority | Comment # | Action | Depends on |
|---|---|---|---|
| P0 | … | … | … |
Red lines¶
- Do not accuse fraud without documentary support; ask for clarification instead
- Do not demand citations to papers you cannot name accurately
- Do not rewrite the paper's contribution into a different paper
- Do not rubber-stamp: if identification is weak, say so plainly
Optional journal-fit paragraph¶
Only if the user asks. Map claims to venue norms (identification bar, magnitude, mechanism evidence) without pretending to know editorial boards' private thresholds.
Venue checklists (accounting & finance)¶
Use when the user names a target outlet. These are pre-submission stress tests, not editorial promises.
JAR / TAR / JAE (archival accounting)¶
- Research question is about accounting (measurement, disclosure, assurance, real effects of GAAP/IFRS) — not a generic corporate-finance paper with an accounting covariate
- Construct validity: accruals / AQ / conservatism / disclosure indices defined and defended against alternatives
- Identification threat named in accounting terms (discretion, concurrent standards changes, auditor change, XBRL mandate timing, etc.)
- Sample filters: Compustat
indfmt/datafmt/popsrc/consol; fiscal-year alignment; winsorization / truncation disclosed - Clustering: firm at minimum; auditor/office or state when the shock lives there
- Mechanism / channel evidence expected at top journals (not only reduced-form ATE)
- Economic magnitude in accounting units (pp of ROA, days of accruals, basis points of spread) — not only t-stats
- Parallel-trends / pre-trends or placebo around disclosure/effective dates when DiD-like
JF / JFE / RFS (finance)¶
- Contribution vs asset-pricing / corporate-finance / banking frontier is explicit in one sentence
- Endogeneity: policy, leverage, and governance designs state the exclusion story without hand-waving
- Fixed effects match the variation (firm + year; industry×year when industry shocks are the threat)
- Clustering justified (firm vs CEO vs deal); no silent switch across tables
- For pricing papers: multiple testing, tradability, and microstructure addressed or scoped out
- Magnitudes in return space (bps, abnormal returns, Sharpe-relevant units) with horizon clear
- Staggered shocks: not only TWFE when adoption timing varies
AEA / general interest econ¶
- External validity and mechanism get more weight than accounting-construct debates
- Identification section could stand alone for a non-specialist empirical reader
- Tables emphasize main claim; appendices hold robustness forests
If the paper straddles accounting and finance, say which literature's bar you are applying and why.