How to format your references using the The Quarterly Journal of Economics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE). 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	Download the output style file
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

Champion, Paul M., “Chemistry. Following the flow of energy in biomolecules,” Science (New York, N.Y.), 310 (2005), 980–982.

A journal article with 2 authors

Grabbe, Caroline, and Ivan Dikic, “Cell biology. Going global on ubiquitin,” Science (New York, N.Y.), 322 (2008), 872–873.

A journal article with 3 authors

Antonovics, Janis, Michael E. Hood, and Christi Howell Baker, “Molecular virology: was the 1918 flu avian in origin?,” Nature, 440 (2006), E9; discussion E9-10.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chhangani, Deepak, Arun Upadhyay, Ayeman Amanullah, Vibhuti Joshi, and Amit Mishra, “Ubiquitin ligase ITCH recruitment suppresses the aggregation and cellular toxicity of cytoplasmic misfolded proteins,” Scientific reports, 4 (2014), 5077.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gregory, Jon, “Central Counterparties,” (Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2014).

An edited book

Fakhfakh, Mourad, Esteban Tlelo-Cuautle, and Patrick Siarry, eds., “Computational Intelligence in Analog and Mixed-Signal (AMS) and Radio-Frequency (RF) Circuit Design,” (Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2015).

A chapter in an edited book

Marbach-Ad, Gili, Laura C. Egan, and Katerina V. Thompson, “Consultation for Individuals and Groups of Faculty,” in A Discipline-Based Teaching and Learning Center: A Model for Professional Development, Laura C. Egan and Katerina V. Thompson, eds. (Cham, Springer International Publishing, 2015).

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 The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Blog post

Luntz, Stephen, “After Seven Months, Philae Has Woken Up!,” IFLScience, <https://www.iflscience.com/space/philae-wakes/> (IFLScience) (Oct. 30, 2018).

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, “Federal Research Opportunities: DOE, DOD, and HHS Need Better Guidance for Participant Activities,” 2016 (Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Baghaei Lakeh, Arash, “Approximate Analytical Solutions of a Generalized van der Pol Oscillator,” Doctoral dissertation, 2013 (Edwardsville, IL, Southern Illinois University).

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

Rohan, Tim, “Head Games,” New York Times, (2015), B15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Champion 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Champion 2005; Grabbe and Dikic 2008).

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

Two authors: (Grabbe and Dikic 2008)
Three authors: (Antonovics, Hood, and Baker 2006)
4 or more authors: (Chhangani et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Quarterly Journal of Economics
ISSN (print)	0033-5533
ISSN (online)	1531-4650
Scope