I was forwarded this email from the Western Economics Association today.

------ Forwarded Message From: Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:10:05 -0700 Cc: "" Subject: Economic Inquiry has a new Editor!

We are pleased to announce the appointment of R. Preston McAfee as the editor of Economic Inquiry. He brings an exciting new perspective to the journal and has proposed an innovative manuscript review policy that you would want to know about. We invite you to read about Dr. McAfee and his exciting no-revision submission policy.

McAfee delivers a sharp critique of the prevailing referee process at economics journals, then announces the journal's bold new reviewing process.

See beneath the fold. Hat tip Tom Means.

...

R. Preston McAfee is the J. Stanley Johnson Professor of Business, Economics, and Management at the California Institute of Technology and is currently working at Yahoo! Research as Research Fellow and Vice President where he leads a group focused on microeconomics research. Dr. McAfee is the author of over seventy articles published in scholarly! economics journals, many of them on auctions and bidding. He was a coeditor of the American Economic Review for nine years, and is an associate editor of Theoretical Economics. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society.

Preston McAfee has done much to design and implement (i) markets to replace government administrative procedures (ii) auctions of access rights to parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and (iii) wholesale spot markets in electric power. Preston McAfee is an authority on industrial organization, and has advised the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the USA Federal Trade Commission.

A Statement from R. Preston McAfee:

I'm honored and excited to be chosen as the editor of Economic Inqui ry. Economic Inquiry has several fundamental strengths. It has taken risks, publishing the out-of-the-ordinary papers employing new methodologies. These are papers that are often quite difficult to evaluate; evaluation of such papers is a strength of the journal. In addition, Economic Inquiry has developed particular areas of leadership, such as defense economics and sports economics, where it attracts the best papers. My intention is to pursue and augment these strengths with three initiatives.

First, I am seeking editorial assistance by economists willing and able to seriously evaluate the difficult-to-evaluate papers.

Second, I am creating "specia! lized co-editors" who handle particular topics in which EI either has a strength or can develop a strength because the field is poorly served by extant journals.

Third, I have created a "no revisions option" (see below) in which authors can get a rapid "yes or no" decision on their manuscript instead of being dragged through endless miserable revisions.

Editor's Announcement: No Revisions Option

Journal time to publication lags have become embarrassing. Many authors have 5 year submission-to-print stories. More insidious, in my view, is the gradual morphing of the referees from evaluators to anonymous co-authors. Referees request increasingly extensive rev! isions. Usually these represent improvements, but the process takes a lot of time and effort, and the end result is often worse owing to its committee-design. Authors, knowing referees will make them rewrite the paper, are sometimes sloppy with the submission. This feedback loop - submitting a sloppy paper since referees will require rewriting combined with a need to fix all the sloppiness - has led to our current misery. Moreover, the expectation that referees will rewrite papers, combined with sloppy submissions, makes refereeing extraordinarily unpleasant. We - the efficiency-obsessed academic discipline - have the least efficient publication process.

The system is broken.

Consequently, Economic Inquiry is starting an experiment. In this experiment, an author can submit under a 'no revisions' policy. This policy means exactly ! what it says: if you submit under no revisions, I (or the co-editor) will either accept or reject. What will not happen is a request for a revision.

I will ask referees: 'is it better for Economic Inquiry to publish the paper as is, versus reject it, and why or why not?' This policy returns referees to their role of evaluator. There will still be anonymous reports.

Authors who receive an acceptance would have the option of publishing without changes. If a referee noticed a minor problem and put it in the report, self-respecting authors would fix the problem. But such fixes would not be a condition of publication.

During the course of the experiment, an ! author may opt for submission under the old system. The old system rem ains the default; to opt in to the new system, please add "I submit under the 'no revisions' policy."

R. Preston McAfee

Editor, Economic Inquiry