How to Prepare a Referee Report

Start by reading the paper quickly so as to get the key ideas. Take notes about what the authors are trying to convey to the reader and the literature context of the paper. Consider how successful the authors are at their approach. Write down any major concerns that you had on this first reading.

Then, read the paper carefully and prepare the report. Reports should be written in a neutral and polite tone, one you might use if one of the senior professors asked your opinion of their latest book or working paper.

Reports have three sections:

Summary:

All reports should begin with a brief statement of the author’s central thesis and should place it in the correct context. Write neutrally as you might if you were recording information for a senior professor.  Answer the question, “what did the authors of this paper view themselves as doing?” Your summary of the paper is a way of establishing your credibility with the authors who want to know if you have carefully studied the paper. This section is generally a paragraph or two in length.

Evaluation:

In this section you should answer the question, “has this paper made an important contribution to the literature?”  Comparisons with similar papers are an appropriate way to place the contribution of the paper in context.  You should describe any critical problems with the paper including places where the logical argument is not tight, the econometric tools are inappropriate, the conclusions are incorrect, or the contribution is inaccurately described.  Consider if there is an alternative theory that is better suited that the author has ignored.  If the work is empirical, comment on whether you found it convincing.  You should not include a recommendation about whether the editor should reject the paper in the referee report.  This is done in a letter to the editor not provided to the authors.  This section is generally less than a page in length.

Information for the Author:

The author should benefit from the referee report.  You should comment on areas where the paper was hard to follow, derivations were obscure, or empirical work was incompletely described.  Most referees divide this into two subsections.  In the first, describe larger issues and what could be done to resolve them.  In the second, list smaller problems (typos, spelling errors, grammatical issues) by page number.  Look for references to the literature that are incorrect.  Your writing should be polite; your goal is to provide helpful advice which would make the paper easier to understand.

The Evolution of Conventions

Conventions evolve through three channels:

•  Vertical transmission (from parents and family to children)
• Horizontal transmission (from peers, “conformity”)
• Learning (imitate the best action)

1. Vertical Transmission

2. Horizontal Transmission

3. Learning: the prob of choosing a certain strategy observed in the population being a monotonically increasing function of the payoff realized by that strategy

There should also be a random component representing maverick behavior and bounded rationality, etc. This random component serves as mutation in the evolutionary process and may help overcome local optimality

I plan to investigate cultural evolution by putting these four components together using agent-based modeling. 

Currently I am thinking of a child-bearing related question.

As we can observe, in many Asian countries, parents (even grandparents!) take care of the children even after they become adults, and then the children provide the parents when they become old. We often hear Chinese say that, “Happiness comes with more offspring.” 

Why do Chinese spend so much time, energy and resources on their children? Why do Asians value family much more than the Europeans? These are, of course, convoluted questions that involve many contributing factors. My conjecture is that, children in Asian countries serve as substitute of financial market.  When people are young and strong, they can earn a large amount wealth all of which they cannot consume. Without a mature financial market, they cannot “invest” or “save” the wealth safely either. Hence, even though they may not realize, Chinese “invest” on child-bearing to protect against the future.

I built a toy model using the idea of overlapping generation to show that child-bearing helps to achieve Pareto optimality just as a financial market does. With the four components interacting with each other, the problem is hard to solve analytically. So I want to use the computational model to simulate the evolution and see whether interesting behaviors that are consistent with empirical regularities emerge from the system.  The simulation can also help to design lab experiment to investigate the problem of cultural evolution.

Science

The advancement of science does not rid man from problems, but instead plunges him more deeply into them.

Model

The simplification of a model needs to lead to some fundamental insights that transcend the constraints of the model.

Distribution of Income

Income is actually not distributed. It is the outcome of the market.

If you happen to have the talents or resources that are in high demand, then you will get wealthy. In other words, you become rich if you can satisfy other people's wants.

Difference between a bad economist and a good one

A bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.  -- Frederic Bastiat