Referee Report Guidelines

Resources:

  1. General discussion of refereeing in Economics by Berk, Harvey, and Hirshleifer
  2. NBER advice on general structure
  3. Poterba and Werning advice from MIT Public Economics class
  4. Lanjouw, Sadoulet, and Janvry advice from Berkeley Development Economics class
  5. Hamermesh on refereeing and professional etiquette in Economics

Assignment: write a referee report intended for the authors to see. The above resources give advice on how to structure your report. Generally your report should be about two pages and contain: first a summary of the paper (1 paragraph), then a discussion of your overall thoughts on the paper (your assessment of the contribution and any major concerns you have), followed by a more in-depth discussion of specific concerns and possible suggestions (these are sometimes enumerated or listed as bullet points), and optionally ending with a list of minor points (ex: mislabeled tables or other small mistakes that make parts of the paper difficult to understand).