My latest submission of my paper, to a yet more specialized journal, has met with a fate similar to that of my previous submissions:

The advisory editor suggests that the paper does not fit the general readership of [this journal] (see his short report below).

That advisory editor writes

I suggest to the author to submit his paper, which certainly deserves an outlet, to more specialistic journals

and then recommends two in particular. So I will review the guidelines for each, and try to decide to which of them I will make my next submission. I take some solace in the fact that, while my paper is indeed being rejected, editors are suggesting that it truly ought to be published in a respected academic journal.

Recently, when working on my next paper, I was struck by the formal similarity between two expressions.

Using to represent outcome X of action c, and to represent a relationship of equal plausibility, implies that X_i is certain given c, and implies that X_i is impossible given c. (The two expressions differ in the subscript of the outcome on the right-hand side of the relation.)

The ideas here are simple: If no other outcome contributes plausibility, then X_i is certain; if X_i contributes no plausibility, then X_i is impossible.

When you read or hear some writer or speaker — especially a journalist or a politician — asserting

Economists say X.

ask yourself two questions:

• Is this all economists or most economists or just some economists?
• Why has this writer or speaker chosen not to specify whether it is some, most, or all?

The same point applies to other areas of expertise. A bald climatologists or scientists or health experts or historians or philosophers should get one to ask the analogous questions. But, right now, I am provoked by yet another article about what economists say.

Let's walk through what it would mean if insurers could not deny coverage to any applicant and could not charge higher premiums on the basis of preëxisting medical conditions.

The out-lays of insurers would of course increase, so the they will do one and likely both of two things:

• Increase premiums for all subscribers: Those without preëxisting conditions would pay more than previously, to off-set the out-lays for those with preëxisting conditions.
• Reduce coverage for all subscribers: The contractual liabilities of insurance companies would be reduced in the case of conditions that could be preëxisting, so that subscribers who developed such conditions after subscription would receive less treatment or face greater out-of-pocket expense.

So the buck-per-bang price of insurance (and probably the absolute price) would increase. This would occur regardless of whether subscription were mandatory, but I think that the consequent increase in price would be greater were coverage not mandatory.

In the absence of requiring people to purchase coverage, fewer people would buy insurance voluntarily. Those most likely to reduce their demand for insurance would be the less affluent and those who perceived themselves as relatively healthy. A significant share of the latter would indeed be relatively healthy, and their departure would mean that the average out-lay per subscriber would increase, which would push-up costs. The departure of the less affluent would tend to push-down out-lays, as the less affluent tend to lead less healthy life-styles, but it would be unreasonable to expect the less affluent to depart in sufficient numbers to restore the lower price, and I'm not aware of anyone advocating a strategy of pricing the poor out of the insurance market.

In fact, without compulsory subscription, it becomes less reasonable to subscribe until one actually needs treatment. Coverage would no longer function as insurance because it needn't be purchased on a precautionary basis. Instead, subscription would simply be a buy-in for some programme of medical care. When the expected cost of needed medical care were less than the buy-in price, one should not purchase a subscription; when the expected cost of needed care were greater, one should buy a subscription.

The proposal is to make subscription compulsory, in which case it's not clear why insurance companies should continue to be involved at all. Insurance premiums would have been replaced with a tax (regardless of whether it were called a tax or called a user fee or called a premium), and the insurance companies would be functioning as extensions of the state. Possibly a bona fide insurance could be offered to supplement coverage provided under the proposal, but it remains none-the-less unclear what legitimate reason there might be for using insurance companies to collecting a tax or to reïmburse those who provided state-mandated coverage. I'm inclined to interpret the intent in part to be to buy-off the insurance companies, giving them what will seem a guaranteed source of revenue, and in part to give a private-sector façade to a state monopsony.

Returning to the issue of the increase in buck-per-bang price, a consequence is going to be that most people who would insure in the absence of the proposed measures are going to have less coverage in their presence, unless they are required to have as much or more coverage than before, at the greater prices implied by not imposing higher fees on those with preëxisting conditions.

After some vacillation over the question of to which of two journals next to submit my paper, I have submitted it to a game theory journal which has published at least one other article attempting to operationalize incomplete preferences. (I think that attempt rather less satisfactory than mine.)

I have, alternately, been considering submitting to an older journal, based in Europe, which focusses primarily on mathematical microëconomic theory, but I decided both that they would be more likely to reject the paper as too specialized, and that my paper would be less widely read if published there.

Good L_rd! In response to my submission, the editor of the third journal responded

While I find the paper interesting, I feel it is too specialized a topic for a general audience journal such as [ours].

The thing is that, unlike the previous two journals, which cover economics in general, this is a journal of microëconomics. Yet, like the editor of the previous journal, the editor still feels that the paper is too specialized for the audience. (Though, as noted, this third journal was recommended by that editor of the second.)

I need to figure-out just who won't think it too specialized.

I have submitted my paper to a third journal, that recommended by the editor who rejected it at the previous journal.

This third journal is one from an association which, like many, charges a lower submission fee to its members. Even with the annual dues and on the assumption that I only made one submission in a year, I would still save money, so I joined. However, after I registered and paid, I learned that it could take up to four weeks for my membership information to be recorded and provided to me. Hence, this delay between submissions. I'm not sure that the money saved was worth that delay.

The second journal to which I submitted my paper is well known for extremely rapid rejections, and my paper was no exception. However, unlike the editor of the previous journal, the editor of this journal gave me a reason, not enough value added for a general economics audience, and suggested a different journal to which I might submit it.

Now, if by value added he means interest, then he may well be correct. And certainly the normal presumption in mainstream economics is that agents are the best judges of what is good for them, so it would probably be bad form for me to insist that the general economics audience ought to care more about the foundations of microëconomics.

The editor in question is a macroëconomist, part of a minority in economics who like to think about economic aggregates. But he's one of that noble sort of macroëconomist who seek solid microfoundatons for their macroëconomics, so I'm less able to make a case that he has a bias against microëconomic theory than if he were one of those Keynesians who insist that aggregates can or must be explained immediately one in terms of others.

Anyway, although I'm unhappy with another rejection, I'm pleased that it is explained, and in terms that indicate that it is not being waved-away as foolish nonsense.