The new *American Economic Journal*

I received my third one Friday and it is called Economic Policy.  A few weeks ago I received a macro journal and another journal which I can no longer remember the theme of (micro maybe?).  In case you don't know these multiple journals have supplemented the one-size-fits-all American Economic Review, which was a single issue every three months.

I don't intend any criticism of the editors, as it seems (based on a mere perusal) they have done a good job in each case.  But the coming of the American Economic Review was for me an event to look forward to.  Now it feels like a bunch of journals are crossing my desk and I wish to be done with them.  If they are going to expand, I would rather get just one more additional journal.  Maybe it's not actually an advantage that they can publish more articles; somehow they all seem less important and I feel as if the real quantity of research — defined in part by its salience to a broad community — has gone down. 

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