What Makes a Good Job Market Paper?

The academic job market is a little bit faddish. And it's not altogether immediately clear what makes a good paper.

I suggest looking at job market papers that placed well. It's a little hard to track down MIT's recent placements but all of Harvard's recent placements have the name and placement institution. (Stanford also names the placement of each student. MIT, Princeton, Yale, and Berkeley. Chicago publishes the schools each year but not with each name so it's more difficult and perhaps less fruitful to track down their job-market paper)

Look at the placements that you would like to pursue (economics departments, business schools, public policy departments, top-five, top-twenty, etc) and read those papers; you'll get an idea for what different groups prefer.

It will give you a great idea of what people are doing, what tools people use, and what's rewarded.