First, what are 2nd-tier general interest journals? Only Economic Journal and RESTAT come to mind. JEEA and JEBO too?
Then, how would you compare a publication into one of the above mentioned journals against, say, a top field journal? Maybe it depends on the field, but suppose you do theoretical IO (lets put aside for now why you would ever want to do this), is it better to publish on Rand or Economic Journal?
If you do theory, JET (or TE) vs JEEA?
If you do public, JPubE vs RESTAT?
Thanks!