A referee report is a critical part of the peer‐review process in academic research. Whenan article is submitted to an academic journal for possible publication, the editor of thejournal sends out the paper to several experts who are familiar with the topic and whocan evaluate the contributions and limitations of the submitted article. Each refereewrites a report, which is the basis for a recommendation to the editor on whether toaccept the paper for publication, to suggest that the authors revise and later resubmitthe paper for publication, or to reject the paper for publication.Since each paper below has already been published, you do not need to provide thissummary recommendation, but your report should consist of all of other aspects of areferee report. Your report is intended for the authors of the paper. It should beapproximately three double‐spaced pages in length, and it should include the followingparts:

 A summary of the paper, which discusses the main research question(s), the

methodology used by the authors, and the conclusions and contributions of the

paper.

 A discussion of whether the question or questions asked are important (or not)

and whether you find the paper convincing or not (and why?)

 A discussion of the concerns you have with the paper. These concerns could be

related to the data being used, the empirical methods, sample selection issues (do

the data seem to be a representative sample?), possible alternative explanations

for the results that the authors do not consider (or do not consider sufficiently),

and any other weaknesses of the paper.

 Finally, a referee report is meant to be constructive criticism, so, whenever

possible, provide possible suggestions for improvement.For more detailed guidelines on writing a referee report, see:

 Berk, Jonathan B., Campbell R. Harvey, and David Hirshleifer, 2015, “Preparing

a Referee Report: Guidelines and Perspectives,” available at SSRN:

http://ssrn.com/abstract=2547191 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2547191

Possible Articles to Review

As is discussed in the Preface of the textbook, the course is organized around four mainthemes: economic growth, distributional issues, economic fluctuations, and therelationship between markets and government. The articles listed below have beenrecently published in either Explorations in Economic History or The Journal of EconomicHistory, which are the two leading journals in the discipline, and each article (or articles)fits into one of these main themes. All of the articles below can be found in Canvas bythe author’s or authors’ last name(s). Please select one of the following four themes foryour referee report:

Theme 1: Economic Growth

There has been substantial debate and concern about the future of economic growth.The two papers below are written by two experts: Robert J. Gordon and Joel Mokyr:

•  Gordon, Robert J., 2018, “Declining American Growth despite OngoingInnovation, Explorations in Economic History 69, 1‐12.
•  Mokyr, Joel, 2018, “The Past and the Future of Innovation: Some Lessons fromEconomic History,” Explorations in Economic History 69, 13‐26.
• In this case, your report on this this theme will cover both papers in a “compare‐and‐contrast” manner, but it must still include your reasoned judgements described in thebullet points on the top of page 2
• Theme 2: Distributional Issues
• The paper below is international and comparative in scope, and it examines the causesof long‐run economic inequality in the United States and other economies: Bengtsson, Erik, and Daniel Waldenstrom, 2018, “Capital Shares and IncomeInequality: Evidence from the Long Run,” Journal of Economic History 78(3), 712‐743.Theme 3: Economic FluctuationsWhile much has been written about the “Quantitative Easing” conducted by the FederalReserve after the Great Recession, which began in December 2007, there was anotherperiod of Quantitative Easing during the Great Depression of the 1930s as described inthe following paper: Jaremski, Matthew, and Gabriel Mathy, 2018, “How was the Quantitative EasingProgram of the 1930s Unwound?,” Explorations in Economic History 69, 27‐49.Theme 4: The Relationship between Markets and GovernmentsAfter the 1906 earthquake devastated San Francisco, city planners were largely able to“start from scratch” in terms of city planning. This paper provided an example of a“natural experiment”: Siodla, James, 2017, “Clean slate: Land‐use Changes in San Francisco after the1906 Disaster,” Explorations in Economic History 68, 1‐16.