Traditional academic journals serve three purposes--to make articles physically available to readers, to provide information to readers about what articles the editors think worth reading, and to provide information to academic departments about the work of those they may wish to employ. Since publishing on the web is very nearly costless, the first is no longer necessary.

This journal is intended to provide a substitute for the second and, ultimately, the third. It consists of a page of links to webbed articles with recommendations by volunteer referees. Anyone can publish, anyone can referee. Whether people read what you publish will depend on your reputation and the reputations of the referees who recommend your article.

This is intended to be a journal of interesting economics. When deciding whether to publish an article in the journal, ask yourself whether it is something that readers, in particular economists, would would read for pleasure or only for duty.

You submit an article to the journal by webbing it, in either HTML or pdf as you prefer, and emailing the title and the URL at which it is webbed to the editor, currently David Friedman; the subject line should say "JIE Article." Unless it is obviously not an economics article, I will put the link on the Journal page, along with a link to the author's email address. I may (or may not) also read the article and add my recommendation if appropriate.

Anyone can referee any article. To do so, read the article and then email me your opinion in a few words--not a standard referee's report but "Recommend" or "Highly Recommend." If you do not think the article interesting and worth reading, say you do not recommend it. Positive reports will be shown as R or R+ with the referee's name and a link to his email address. Negative reports will not be shown. Referees are, of course, free to email additional comments to authors if they wish. Before posting reports I will verify them by emailing the referee.

This journal is an experiment. If it gets no submissions it will terminate sometime soon. If it gets lots of submissions most of which I think are boring, I may change the rules to permit a first level of filtering before posting links. Suggestions as to other changes are welcome; they should go to ddfr@daviddfriedman.com.