This quality is reflected in a new journal ranking done by two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. It shows that the Review of Economic Dynamics ranks 13th (!) among all economics journals in terms of impact per article, where impact is measured in terms of impact on economics journals. (See Table 2 of FRBB 05-12 for details.) This is a remarkable achievement for so young a journal. Gary Hansen and Tom Cooley have indeed done a fantastic job of getting the journal off the ground.

I want to use the rest of this essay to share my ideas about the journal. One aspect of the journal that I especially like is its broad scope. Some people perceive the RED as a macroeconomics journal. But this perception is wrong. The mission of the Review of Economic Dynamics is to not to be a field journal in macroeconomics, but to serve as the flagship journal for the Society for Economic Dynamics. The scope of the Society is much broader than macroeconomics. (After all, the next President of the Society is David K. Levine, who is best known for his contributions to economic theory.) Our board of associate editors at the RED reflects this large scope. It includes such scholars as Wolfgang Pesendorfer (economic theory), Urban Jermann (financial economics), and Thomas Holmes (industrial organization). I can't put it any better than the journal's website does: "We publish contributions in any area of economics provided they meet the highest standards of scientific research." The scope of the journal is defined not by any particular field description, but by the interests of the members of the Society.

I hesitate to be more precise about what those interests are. The journal has published papers that are contributions to pure theory. It has published papers that are contributions to pure measurement. It has published papers that use econometrics in sophisticated ways to explore the match between theory and data.

Nonetheless, I do believe that there is a kind of work that has a special home in the Review: the work that is called "quantitative theory." Many in the economics profession remain hostile, or at best ignorant, about applications of this methodology. The Review regards it as the essential tool for addressing many of the most important questions in economics. If you've written a quantitative theoretic paper of any kind, the Review provides the most constructive and useful reviewing process available.

I have two goals as co-ordinating editor. First, I want to do what all editors want to do: to improve throughput speed without reducing the quality of the review process. My aim is to get turn-around times down to 4 months or less on the vast majority of our submissions. From my years of experience as editor/associate editor at various journals, I see no reason why the review process should take longer than this.

My second goal is more important. For all of us in the Society, the annual SED conference has become the most exciting intellectual event of the year. I would like to see more of this energy translated into the journal. There is a simple way for this to happen: the members of the Society all need to treat the RED as our primary field journal. What does this mean in practice? All members of the Society should follow the Rule:

If you have a paper that is appropriate for the SED meetings, and you're not sending it to a top five journal, send it to the Review of Economic Dynamics.

If we all follow the Rule, I guarantee that the RED will reflect, even more than it does now, the intellectual excitement that we see at the SED conference. I look forward to receiving your submissions and being your editor in the next five years!