May 12th, 2026
Submissions Related to Editors’ Research Are More Likely to Succeed: Evidence from Economics Journals
(En Qi Teo, Toulouse School of Economics, Others)
Examining the editorial process at four leading economics journals, we find that editors were less likely to desk reject manuscripts related to their own research interests. This result is robust to controls for research trends, journal missions and time-varying journal characteristics. We use information on latent manuscript quality revealed by referee reports to ascertain the mechanism---whether editorial favoritism or strategic submissions by authors. Structural estimates point to the latter. Consistent with this interpretation, more productive scholars were disproportionately likely to submit related manuscripts. Finally, editors' research interests did not affect the downstream decision to invite revisions.