Writing & Contribution Framing (rfs-writing-style)

When to trigger

• The abstract or introduction buries what is new
• Prose is dense, over-hedged, or jargon-heavy
• The contribution is implied but never stated as a crisp claim
• The paper is technically done and needs a final exposition pass

Run this only after identification, robustness, and exhibits hold up. Do not polish prose around an unsettled result.

How RFS papers read

The best RFS papers make the new question and the answer legible in the first two pages. An RFS Editor desk-screens before referees, so the contribution must land before page three or risk a desk reject. RFS welcomes theory + empirics, so the prose must integrate them, not present a model and then an unrelated regression — Brunnermeier and Pedersen (2009, RFS 22(6)) is a model of a tight theory→prediction→evidence arc. Two hard RFS house-style rules bind the writing: the abstract must be ≤ 100 words (RFS returns longer abstracts), and references follow Chicago Manual of Style author-date format. A long, literature-first abstract is both off-house-style and over the word limit.