How to format your references using the Economic Theory citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Economic Theory. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Miller, D.M.: Neuroscience. Synapses here and not everywhere. Science. 317, 907–908 (2007)

A journal article with 2 authors

Keith, D.W., Farrell, A.E.: Environmental science. Rethinking hydrogen cars. Science. 301, 315–316 (2003)

A journal article with 3 authors

Udem, T., Holzwarth, R., Hänsch, T.W.: Optical frequency metrology. Nature. 416, 233–237 (2002)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kumar, K.A., Sano, G.-I., Boscardin, S., Nussenzweig, R.S., Nussenzweig, M.C., Zavala, F., Nussenzweig, V.: The circumsporozoite protein is an immunodominant protective antigen in irradiated sporozoites. Nature. 444, 937–940 (2006)

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Laster, B.: Professional Git®. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, USA (2016)

An edited book

Blanke, M.: Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Wanko, M., Rubio, A.: Theoretical Methods. In: Brøndsted Nielsen, S. and Wyer, J.A. (eds.) Photophysics of Ionic Biochromophores. pp. 45–65. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2013)

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Economic Theory.

Blog post

Taub, B.: Feeding Graphene To Silkworms Makes Them Spin Super Silk, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/feeding-graphene-silkworms-makes-them-spin-super-silk/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office: A Capsule Version of: Nanomanufacturing--Emergence and Implications for U.S. Competitiveness, the Environment, and Human Health. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2014)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Schaper, P.: Meaning making: Learning in whistle blowing, (2010)

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Walsh, M.W.: Puerto Rico Asks Congress for Law to Allow It to Restructure $49 Billion in Debt, (2016)

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Miller 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Keith and Farrell 2003; Miller 2007).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Keith and Farrell 2003)
Three or more authors: (Kumar et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Economic Theory
Abbreviation	Econ. Theory
ISSN (print)	0938-2259
ISSN (online)	1432-0479
Scope	Economics and Econometrics

Research and Writing Guides