Managing Editors’ Statement

The Review of Economic Studies has been particularly strong in the fields of microeconomics, economic theory and econometrics since its foundation by a group of young economists in 1933. We remain committed to continuing and strengthening our publications in these fields while increasing our coverage of other research areas, such as macroeconomics, applied econometrics, finance, experimental economics and political economics. We are also proud to maintain a tradition of promoting the work of young researchers who are not yet established in the profession and so are keen to encourage new and emerging authors to submit their papers to us.

We aim to provide an efficient and high quality editorial review process to our authors. We now receive 900 – 1,000 submissions per year, the majority of which go through a full refereeing procedure. Our referees provide authors with high quality and full reports and feedback. Despite the demand this makes on their time and that of the editorial team most manuscripts are processed within a six month window. Our intention is to increase the proportion of papers which meet this standard -- even as the number of submissions we receive annually continues to grow. To meet this goal we have introduced an online manuscript management system which has enabled the individual managing editors and the Editorial Office to co-ordinate and execute their work more efficiently. We expect this to be of benefit to our authors in particular, but also to assist our referees and others involved in the review of papers submitted to the editorial process.

Finally, the Review of Economic Studies relies on the voluntary service of a pool of high-calibre referees who give their time to write thoughtful and thorough reviews of our manuscripts in a timely fashion. Without their contribution we would be unable to provide the constructive and insightful feedback to authors for which we strive. We therefore would like to take this opportunity to thank all those referees who have helped us by providing detailed and professional reports within our deadlines.

Average paper turnaround times

Figures available at February 2009 show that first submissions which entered the editorial process between 1 March 2008 and 28 August 2008 experienced a median delay to decision of 103 days. Eighty five per cent of papers were returned to their authors in under 210 days.

Average paper turnaround times to 31 August 2008 (Figures available February 2009)
Period Submitted	Submission stage	Number of decisions	Mean Delay (days)	%>7 months	Total submissions received	MS pending February 2009
01/03/2008 to 31/08/2008	-1	406	107	9	452	46
	-2	30	172	23	33	3
	-3	13	113	23	16	3
	-4 +	3	32	None	3	None
	Total	452			504
01/09/2007 to 29/02/2008	-1	396	114	8	401	5
	-2	32	181	33	34	1
	-3	11	157	27	11	None
	-4 +	6	132	None	6	None
	Total	445			452
01/03/2007 to 31/08/2007	-1	346	105	8	348	2
	-2	31	220	58	31	None
	-3	26	173	27	26	None
	-4 +	2	97	None	2	None
	Total	405			432