Andrea Wilson (Princeton) - 19.10.2022

We explore a novel model where authors of heterogeneous papers submit to ranked journals with admission standards on noisy referee evaluations. Journal caliber reflects paper quality in a rational expectations equilibrium. In our main finding, journal rejection rates first rise and then fall in caliber, and so cannot be used to rank journals. The logic by extension applies to college rankings. This paper therefore invalidates using selectivity to rank journals and colleges. Our theory holds for all signals obeying a novel log-concavity condition that is typically met.