AP‘s second AER shouldn‘t really count for him. His coauthors already had a r&r from the AER before he joined, and in the revision they decided to add some data work, which I guess he delivered.No he did not. They just blackmailed him (to add the empirical result from their joint project to their paper). And, come on, who would not do the same?
From a different joint project? Are you sure?
Yes, See eg:
https://www.steuern.bwl.uni-kiel.de/de/fotos/maxtax-2018-programm
I saw it. Editor too and asked for the real empirical work in the AER. So they gave up on the 2nd paper and merged the 2. who would not do it for an AER?