Availability

Open Access

All journal content is freely available. This "Open Access" enables authors to obtain the maximum possible exposure for their work. The web makes the free dissemination of research feasible, and the free availability of sophisticated editorial software makes the cost of operating a peer-reviewed journal minimal. Open Access to research is thus socially efficient. We hope that TE's lead in making the most significant research in economic theory freely available will lead others to establish Open Access journals for other fields of economics, eventually leading the profession to a new norm in which all research is freely available and under the full control of members of the profession.

Copyright

When an article is accepted for publication, nearly all academic journals in economics require authors to transfer copyright to the publisher. This transfer is not consistent with two core principles of Theoretical Economics. First, we want the work that we publish to be freely accessible to the widest audience possible. Second, we want authors to retain the maximum control over their work consistent with the first goal. For this reason, authors who publish in Theoretical Economics release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given. For details of the rights authors grant users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in Theoretical Economics. Authors must post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.

Hard copy

Through 2009, we produced a hard copy of the four quarterly issues of the journal annually. Starting in 2010, a hard copy of every issue is produced and bundled with an issue of Econometrica. January 2024 the journal moved to online only and no longer offers a hard copy of its issues.