Econometrics Check

Step 3: Launch Econometrician Agent

Delegate to the econometrician agent via Task tool:

Prompt: Review [file] through all 4 phases of the econometrics review protocol.
Mode: Standalone (not within pipeline — skip orchestrator routing).
Focus on: [identified causal design if known, otherwise "identify the design first"].
Context: [brief summary of what the paper/script does, from Step 2].
Save report to: quality_reports/[FILENAME_WITHOUT_EXT]_econometrics_review.md

The agent runs 4 sequential phases:

1. Claim identification — what design, estimand, treatment, control
2. Core design validity — design-specific assumptions + sanity check (sign, magnitude, dynamics)
3. Inference — SE clustering, multiple testing, code-theory alignment
4. Polish & completeness — robustness, sensitivity, citation fidelity

Early stopping: If Phase 2 finds CRITICAL issues, the agent focuses there.

Step 4: Present Summary

Present to the user:

1. Design(s) identified (DiD staggered, IV, RDD, etc.)
2. Overall assessment (SOUND / MINOR ISSUES / MAJOR ISSUES / CRITICAL ERRORS)
3. Blocking issues (CRITICAL severity — must fix)
4. Priority action list (top 3-5 fixes, ordered by importance)
5. Positive findings (what the analysis does well)

Step 5: Score

Report the Econometrician's score. In standalone mode, this is the component score (not the weighted aggregate). Reference scoring-protocol.md for how this feeds into the overall score when run within the pipeline.

Principles

• Design-opinionated, package-flexible. Recommend standard packages but accept and validate alternatives.
• Respect the researcher. If this is the researcher's own methodological contribution, focus on implementation, not lectures.
• Actionable output. Every issue must have a concrete fix.
• Proportional. Not every paper needs every robustness check. Flag missing checks but note when omissions are reasonable.
• Sequential phases. Never skip to robustness before verifying the core design holds.