I am in IO, even I agree that the field of macro covers a very broad area; macro-labor, international finance, macro-finance, monetary, fiscal policy, macro-public finance, growth, etc, each of which may be comparable to (or bigger than) smaller fields in terms of the size. So more important? I am not sure. But macro is probably the biggest field. Publishing in JME is definitely much more difficult than in some other smaller top field journals.
JME ranking
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Hater
No change, next choice for Macro paper after enough top-5 attempts, together with AEJ:Macro. A bit of a coin flip between the two although the AEJ: Macro still has the edge (much better managed, and better overall editorial board; especially some AEs at JME are not up to the standards of the journal).
Actually, not at all: on the contrary, the JME is one of my favorite journals and I regret every sign of decline (such as narrow-mindedness of some AEs).
Macro is big enough to have at least two top journals, both of which are way above most other top field journals (no matter what others understandably argue). -
Hater
No change, next choice for Macro paper after enough top-5 attempts, together with AEJ:Macro. A bit of a coin flip between the two although the AEJ: Macro still has the edge (much better managed, and better overall editorial board; especially some AEs at JME are not up to the standards of the journal).
Actually, not at all: on the contrary, the JME is one of my favorite journals and I regret every sign of decline (such as narrow-mindedness of some AEs).
Macro is big enough to have at least two top journals, both of which are way above most other top field journals (no matter what others understandably argue).At a top macro place and I can say that they’re thought of more or less equally and I find people submit to one or the other based on personal preference and connection with editors
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JME = top 10, AEJ = top 15, RED = top 20.
''Macro'' journals are broader than field journals as they cover a bunch of topics. They are different in terms of methodology but cover broader topics. Anything with a model and data can go to a macro journal even if it is international, labor, monetary, asset pricing, public, energy, development, health, growth. The only topic not really belonging to macro journals is IO.
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Say whatever making you feel good. There is no way I can convince my MRM colleagues a JME is more than a filed pub like AEJ, Rand, JET, JoE, JHE, in a tenure case.
In Top 10, I do not think it matters. In non top 40, I guess top 5 and top fields are equally counted.
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Deep down inside, you and your colleagues know that macro is THE most important area of economics
Say whatever making you feel good. There is no way I can convince my MRM colleagues a JME is more than a filed pub like AEJ, Rand, JET, JoE, JHE, in a tenure case.
In Top 10, I do not think it matters. In non top 40, I guess top 5 and top fields are equally counted. -
I have never published in JME and even I know that it is one of the great journals of economics. If you list the non T5 papers connected to Nobel laureates, you will likely find a solid representation of JME
No opinion on JME but just want to point out that anyone who has published in JME sees a thread like this and clicks on it as fast as possible to post about how important and great it is. People who have not published there largely ignore it.
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I think this is pointless in terms of talking about average quality. If one can choose any journal for publication, then everyone would like to publish in a top 5 over JME.
However, not all great papers are published in top 5 especially the groundbreaking ones. Therefore the upper tail of JME can do better than that of a top 5.
But that does not mean your publication in JME is better than a top 5 publication. At the end of the day, it is the quality of the paper that matters not the journal stamp.