Author Checklist

Checklist for Accepted Manuscripts

Updated Nov.25.2025

Author’s Final Checklist

The purpose of this checklist is to help authors assemble and format their files so their accepted articles and supporting materials can be processed quickly and accurately. Please carefully review and check off each of the following items before uploading the final submission. Once completed, this form should be initialed at the bottom by the corresponding author and uploaded with the final submission.

General

• Manuscript conforms to the AETR style guidelines.
• Manuscript is single-column double-spaced (including footnotes), using 12-point Times New Roman font or similar, with 1-inch margins and 8" x 11.5" page size. Do not justify right margins or use end-of-line hyphenation features.
• Place all tables and figures as they are to appear in the submission.
• Appendices are supplied before the references.
• Online supplementary materials and teaching notes are supplied as a separate Word file(s).

Title Page

• The article title does not include any acronyms or abbreviations.
• The title page includes the following information:
• Full title
• Authors’ full names
• Authors’ affiliations, including position title, department (if relevant), and institution. An email address should be provided for the corresponding author only.
• Acknowledgments, if any, including
• Conflicts of interest
• Credit, acknowledgment, or thanks for material or informational assistance
• (Optional) Author contributions using the CREDIT system https://credit.niso.org/.
• Human subjects approval statement, if necessary, indicating the entity (e.g., office, IRB) providing review and approval, university name, and application/project number. For example, “This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of [Institution Name] (Protocol #[XXXX]). All participants provided informed consent prior to participation.”
• Acknowledgment of all financial support, explicitly indicating the funding agency, grant (or proposal) title, and award number.
• An abstract of no more than 200 words
• Up to six keywords or phrases, in alphabetical order, lowercase except for proper nouns, separated by commas
• Up to six JEL codes

Article Text

Begin the manuscript at the top of a new page. The introduction should include a heading (“1 Introduction” is acceptable). Please make sure that the manuscript follows the AETR formatting, headings, and general style guidelines (See Section 2.1.3 Submission Preparation).

Footnotes

• Footnotes should be double-spaced and use 12-point Times New Roman font or similar. Use the word processor’s footnote controls to place footnotes at the bottom of the page on which they are cited.

Equations and Mathematical Notation

• Display all but very short mathematical expressions centered and on a separate line.
• Displayed equations should be centered.
• Label all display equations on the right margin with consecutive Arabic numerals in parentheses.
• Equations referenced in the text must be labeled and the equation number enclosed in parentheses (e.g., “Equation (5),” “Equilibrium (2)”).
• Use a standard formula editor or the formula editor in Word (preferred)
• Do not use text boxes containing equations formatted in a different program. Under no circumstances should equations use “Symbol” font. These will need to be rewritten by the authors.
• Include one blank line of space above and below each equation.

Tables and Figures

• All tables and figures should contain sufficient information to enable self-explanation.
• Place all tables and figures as they are to appear in the submission.
• Each table/figure must be referred in the text, in the proper sequence.
• Each table/figure must have a title.
• Align tables/figures left with no text wrapping.
• All tables and figures should contain sufficient information to enable self-explanation. That is, there are sufficient notes and labels to allow readers to understand the information in the table with minimal need to reference the text.

Tables

• Each table has a descriptive title.
• Tables must be constructed using Word’s table function. Tables should never be included as an image file or constructed/aligned using manual tabs or spaces.
• Tables may be single-spaced, minimum 10-point font size.
• Color fonts that contrast well against a white background are acceptable.
• All table columns have a heading.
• Each table must be consistent in the number of decimal places used. Exceptions can be made for values that would otherwise be rounded to 0.00. In this case, 2–3 significant digits may be reported. (e.g., 0.0012 should be reported as is, not as 0.00.) Use of scientific notation (e.g., 1.2 E–7) is also acceptable.
• Tables contain no vertical lines, shading, or patterns; gridlines should be hidden.
• Vertical alignment of cells in tables should be centered and, if containing decimals, decimal aligned.
• General explanatory notes: Use the heading “Notes:” and continue on the same line with the first word of the note, in unindented paragraph form. The note paragraph must define the use of asterisks (e.g., *, ** and *** for 10%, 5% and 1% significance levels, respectively) or parentheses (e.g., for standard deviations) where used.
• Table footnotes: Use lowercase English letters to attach footnotes to specific items within a table and place the footnotes below the bottom line of the table in (unindented) paragraph form.
• Leave at least one blank line before and after a table.

Figures

• Each figure has a descriptive title.
• Authors are encouraged to create colored figures. Authors should think about how their image will look when printed in black and white. Think about using different line types and shading to differentiate aspects of the figure when needed, as well.
• All text within the image must be Cambria, not bold or italic. Axis titles are 12-point font, sentence case. Axis labels are 10-point font, lowercase. Legends are either 10- or 12-point font, whichever works better. Figure background should be white, and the figure should not have a border.
• In addition to the figures embedded in the document, figures should be supplied as high-quality image files at least 300 dpi (.png, .pdf, or .jpg).
• Do not place figure titles or captions within the figure image.
• General explanatory notes: Use the heading “Notes:” and continue on the same line with the first word of the note, in paragraph form.
• Sources: If it is necessary to cite a source for a figure, use the heading “Source:” and continue on the same line with the first word of the note. It is not necessary to cite “authors’ calculations” (or similar) as a source.

Citations

• All citations in the text must be included in the references, and all references must be cited in the text.
• Citations in text use “et al.” only with four or more authors.
• Citations in text give year of reference in all cases. For web pages, if no date is available, use year of last update or access.
• Parenthetical citations should use the author(s) name, followed by the year of publication (Johnson 1992). Separate multiple parenthetical citations using semicolons (e.g., Johnson 1992; Bekkerman 2003).
• When listing two or more citations parenthetically in the text, list chronologically first, then alphabetically if necessary (e.g., “Jones and Perkins 1996; Kader 2001; Smith 2001”).
• When one author or set of authors has more than one publication in a year, use “a,” “b,” “c,” etc. to distinguish (e.g., “USDA, 2017a,” “USDA, 2017b,” “USDA, 2017a,b,” “Johnson, 1996b”).
• Quotations must appear exactly as written in the original published work (misspellings in the original work must be included as written and followed by “[sic]”).
• Page numbers must be supplied for direct quotations where possible.

Appendices

Short appendices may appear in the main article if they include information that may be needed to understand the assumptions and/or conclusions discussed in the manuscript, but that are too long to include in the main text. Examples include variable description tables, and additional results tables, among others.

• Place appendices after the references in the main text document.
• Multiple appendices are A, B, etc.
• Reference each appendix at least once in the text.

More extensive materials should be included as supplementary materials rather than as appendices.

References

• Where available, DOIs (digital object identifiers) MUST be included in the reference list.
• References must follow AETR reference guidelines. These guidelines can be found on the AETR web page with the submission guidelines. The Editors will ask authors to revise their references if these guidelines are not observed.
• References should be single-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font.
• All citations in the text must be included in the references, and all references must be cited in the text.
• References use authors’ initials rather than full names.
• When page numbering is not continuous throughout the volume of a serial publication (e.g., journals), issue numbers are always given along with page numbers. Otherwise, issue numbers may be included at the authors’ option, though they are preferred by the journal.
• All “in press” or “forthcoming” references have been updated. Authors are responsible for verification of all references. Citation to a working paper is acceptable only if it includes the information required to publicly access it.
• Inclusive page numbers for each reference have been given.
• The reference list has been ordered alphabetically (not chronologically) by authors’ last names. Citations with identical authors are listed chronologically.
• Where a web address is given and does not refer to a pdf, a date of access is necessary.

Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials are those that may interest and be important to readers but are not necessary to understand the context, assumptions and/or conclusions of the manuscript. Examples include tables with robustness results, survey instruments, experimental protocols, syllabi, examples of homework assignments, among others. Online supplements will not be copy edited. The article should use and cite online supplementary material rather than simply tell readers that supplementary materials are available upon request.

• Supply supplementary online information as a separate file.
• In the main text, refer to tables and figures as, e.g., Table S1, Figure S2, or more generally as “the online supplementary materials.”
• Style of online supplementary material follows the guidelines for articles.
• For supplementary materials, please combine them into one document when possible.
• Please include a title page, with the title of the manuscript (centered) at the top of the page, followed by a list of all authors below the title, separated by a single space. Then below that, please include the title "Supplementary Materials".

Teaching Notes

Teaching Notes are required for Case Study submissions and strongly encouraged for Teaching and Educational Methods submissions when applicable.  In addition, Teaching Notes will not be edited and are the responsibility of the author.

• Make sure all sections of Teaching Notes are included and completed. See Section 1.3 Teaching Note in the ATER submission guidelines.
• Supply Teaching Notes as a separate WORD file.
• Style of Teaching Notes follows the guidelines for articles.
• For Teaching Notes, please combine them into one document when possible.
• Please include a title page, with the title of the manuscript (centered) at the top of the page, followed by a list of all authors below the title, separated by a single space. Below that, please include the title "Teaching Notes".