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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Hanash, Sam, “Disease proteomics,” Nature, 422 (2003), 226–232.

A journal article with 2 authors

Loh, Kyle M., and Bing Lim, “Stem cells: Equilibrium established,” Nature, 521 (2015), 299–300.

A journal article with 3 authors

Djuranovic, Sergej, Ali Nahvi, and Rachel Green, “miRNA-mediated gene silencing by translational repression followed by mRNA deadenylation and decay,” Science (New York, N.Y.), 336 (2012), 237–240.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Dyhrman, S. T., P. D. Chappell, S. T. Haley, J. W. Moffett, E. D. Orchard, J. B. Waterbury, and E. A. Webb, “Phosphonate utilization by the globally important marine diazotroph Trichodesmium,” Nature, 439 (2006), 68–71.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Irene, Eugene A., “Electronic Materials Science,” (Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005).

An edited book

Bernardi, Simona, “Model-Driven Dependability Assessment of Software Systems,” (J. Merseguer and D. C. Petriu, eds.) (Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Li, Jason, Xinming Ou, and Raj Rajagopalan, “Uncertainty and Risk Management in Cyber Situational Awareness,” in Cyber Situational Awareness: Issues and Research, Sushil Jajodia, Peng Liu, Vipin Swarup, and Cliff Wang, eds., Advances in Information Security (Boston, MA, Springer US, 2010).

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

Davis, Josh, “WHO Releases Hit List Of 12 Bacteria That Pose Biggest Threat To Human Health,” IFLScience, <https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/who-releases-hit-list-of-12-bacteria-that-pose-biggest-threat-to-human-health/> (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, “Enrollment and Attendance Aspects of Federal Student Financial Aid Programs,” 1969 (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

Hendricks-Harris, Mary Therese, “Quality Induction: The Effects of Comprehensive Induction on New Teacher Retention and Job Satisfaction,” Doctoral dissertation, 2012 ( St. Charles, MO, Lindenwood 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

Protess, Ben, “G.O.P.’s Paths to Unraveling Wall Street Rules From Obama Era,” New York Times, (2017), A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hanash 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Hanash 2003; Loh and Lim 2015).

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

Two authors: (Loh and Lim 2015)
Three authors: (Djuranovic, Nahvi, and Green 2012)
4 or more authors: (Dyhrman et al. 2006)

About the journal

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