you must write a referee reports on an assigned paper that is currently at the working paper (unpublished) stage (chosen by my professor, I will attach it with the instructions as well). Your referee reports should be around 3 pages long and should include at the end a recommendation to the editor (normally that goes in a separate cover letter) as to whether the paper should be (1) accepted for publication as it stands, (2) accepted, subject to minor revisions, (3) returned to the author for major revisions, a judgement on publication to be made after resubmission, or (4) rejected. Assume that the paper has been submitted to a high level field journal such as the Journal of International Economics (that is, it is neither submitted to a top-tier publication like the AER nor an average level journal such as the Canadian Journal of Economics, so judge accordingly).
A referee report normally begins with a short summary of the objectives of the paper, and of what the authors have accomplished in the paper. The key questions that you want to answer in this part of the report are: What did the authors view themselves as doing and what did they accomplish? This part should generally be no more than one half-page to one page long. It should be quite neutral in tone as if you were recording the information for yourself. Your summary of the paper is a way of establishing your credibility to the authors and the editor, who want to know that you have carefully studied their paper and that you have understood the key points made by the paper and the nature of the contribution to knowledge. You are also providing the authors, and the editors, with an alternative introduction to and a summary of their work. At this stage, you may also want to place the paper in the literature and may wish to indicate which parts (theoretical development, empirical results, methodology, policy implications) make a (i) very important contribution, or (ii) fairly important contribution or (iii) a not very important contribution to the literature. Note that it is the authors responsibility to establish the fact that an important contribution has been made. You may want to peruse a key paper that the authors cite as a source of debate or that provides the motivation for their paper. You may also wish to make a brief comment on the expositional qualities of the paper; that is, is the paper straightforward to read and self-contained, or is the exposition convoluted. You shouldnt hesitate to make positive comments, if warranted, even if your judgement is ultimately going to be harsh. The second part of the report, the critical analysis, is the most important one and should be 2-3 pages long. In this part you discuss the merits of the paper itself and whether the paper does make a contribution to knowledge that is worthy of publication in this prestigious journal. You may want to organize your discussion by going from the big picture to the smaller details.
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