An Auction Market for Journal Articles

Economic articles are published very slowly. We believe this results from the poor incentives referees face. We recommend that an auction market replace the current, push system for submitting papers and demonstrate that our proposed market has a stable, Pareto-improving equilibrium. Besides the benefits of speed, this pull mechanism increases the quality of articles and journals and rewards referees for their effort. Although the auction price gives a prior on a paper's future value, its actual value|as a published article|depends on later citations. Since the auction price of later papers goes to the editors, authors and referees of earlier, cited articles, "auction earnings" give a direct measure of the value of articles, journals (the sum of articles) and academics - as authors, editors and reviewers - rewarding good writing, decisions and effort, respectively.