Review of Environmental Economics and Policy

• 1. Introduction

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  The Review of Environmental Economics and Policy exists to answer a question that troubled the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists for years: where does rigorous environmental economics go when it needs to speak to people who are not economists? The journal, known as REEP, publishes twice each year and sits in a deliberate middle ground. It is too scholarly for the general press and too readable for the technical research journals. That gap is exactly what REEP was built to fill. The questions it raises are real ones. How do environmental economists get their findings to the people who make policy? How do sub-fields within the discipline talk to each other? And what happens when a journal asks its authors to write not for specialists, but for a curious and informed public?

• 2. A Gap Between Two Worlds

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  Spencer Banzhaf, based at North Carolina State University, edits the journal and oversees the vision that shaped it from the start. REEP was modelled on a specific precedent: the relationship between the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the American Economic Review. Just as that pairing bridges accessible synthesis and technical research in mainstream economics, REEP is designed to bridge the gap between the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and the general interest press. The Association of Environmental and Resource Economists spent years considering the idea before the journal came into being. Its companion publication, the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, handles the more technical research side of the organisation's output. REEP fills the complementary role of making that world legible to a wider audience.

• 3. What the Journal Sets Out to Do

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  REEP publishes symposia, articles, and regular features that pursue several interlocking aims. One is to synthesise lessons from recent and ongoing environmental economics research so that readers do not need to track dozens of individual papers. Another is to provide economic analysis of specific environmental policy questions. The journal also works to connect academics with the broader policy community, a relationship that environmental economics research does not always maintain on its own. Strengthening the link between research and actual policy decisions is treated as a distinct goal, separate from simply reporting what researchers have found. The journal also positions itself as a resource for the classroom, offering readings useful to students and teachers who want current thinking on environmental economics without needing access to highly technical material.

• 4. The Commissioned Model

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  REEP operates in a way that sets it apart from most academic journals: articles are generally commissioned by the editors rather than submitted speculatively by authors. The journal still subjects those commissioned pieces to anonymous peer review, so the scholarly standards remain intact. But because the material must be written for a non-technical audience and must be highly readable, unsolicited manuscripts are actively discouraged. The editors are candid about the reason. If a paper written in REEP's accessible style turns out not to be suitable for the journal, there are very few other outlets where it could be published. Writing one without a prior approach to the editors is, as the journal's own framing puts it, more of a gamble than usual in the world of economics journals. Instead, the editors invite proposals covering both topics and potential authors, so that suitability can be judged carefully before any writing begins.

• 5. Reaching the Right Readers

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  REEP is indexed by EconLit and the Journal of Economic Literature, the two primary bibliographic resources that economists use to track research. That indexing positions the journal within the professional ecosystem, ensuring that its accessible articles are findable alongside more technical scholarship. The Association of Environmental and Resource Economists frames the journal as serving two distinct audiences simultaneously: the worldwide membership of the AERE itself, and what the organisation calls its broader constituency of interested but non-specialist readers. Proposals for topics and contributing authors are welcomed at the journal's editorial office, keeping the pipeline open to the wider community rather than limiting it to a closed network of insiders.