The slowdown in first-response times of economics journals: Can it be beneficial?

The first-response time (henceforth FRT) of economics journals has increased over the last four decades from 2 months to 3-6 months. The optimal FRT, however, is not zero because a longer FRT deters submissions of mediocre papers to good journals and consequently saves valuable time of referees and editors. Interestingly, the change in the actual FRT is in the same direction as the change in the optimal FRT. The latter has increased because of the availability of research on the Internet prior to publication and because papers became longer and more mathematical, increasing the costs of refereeing a paper. (JEL L82, A10, A14, I23, A19).