On folklore and ‘Folklore’ (QJE, forthcoming): Forging dialogue, reconciling trade-offs Somehow one senses that authors are quite confident about the stature of their paper when they give it a one-word title (see ‘Corruption’, ‘Worms’). And upon its recent acceptance at QJE, ‘Folklore’ (by Stelios Michalopoulos and Melanie Meng Xue) seemed to vindicate that assessment, as did rapid circulation of this news among development researchers on Twitter. By scholarly life’s primary metric of stature, publication of an article in a journal like QJE deems it to be, by definition, ‘great’. It’s certainly an interesting and innovative contribution; it’s a good paper to think with (the main quality criteria I apply these days) and the authors have thoughtfully engaged with complex phenomenon. I welcome its arrival but will leave it to others to quibble about methodological details and other normal intra-disciplinary issues. Since I’m not an economist – albeit one who has spent his entire career in their close company – I offer instead some brief thoughts on it from neighboring lands.