American Economic Review

2011年、ケネス・アロー、Douglas Bernheim、マーティン・フェルドシュタイン、ダニエル・マクファデン、James M. Poterba、ロバート・ソローによって構成された“Top 20 Committee”は、以下にあげる20本の論文をこれまでにAERに掲載された中で最も重要な論文として選んだ^[7]。これら論文の著者のうち13人はノーベル経済学賞を受賞している。^{[独自研究?]}

1. "A Theory of Production" (1928), by Paul Douglas and Charles Cobb.
2. "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945), by F. A. Hayek
3. "Economic Growth and Income Inequality" (1955), by Simon Kuznets.
4. "The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance and the Theory of Investment" (1958), by Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller.
   →「MM理論」を参照
5. "A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas" (1961), by Robert Mundell.
6. "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care" (1963), by Kenneth Arrow.
7. "Capital Theory and Investment Behavior" (1963), by Dale W. Jorgenson
8. "National Debt in a Neoclassical Growth Model" (1965), by Peter A. Diamond.
9. "The Role of Monetary Policy" (1968), by Milton Friedman.
10. "Migration, Unemployment and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis" (1970), by John R. Harris and Michael Todaro.
11. "Optimal Taxation and Public Production I: Production Efficiency" and "Optimal Taxation and Public Production II: Tax Rules" (1971), by Peter A. Diamond and James Mirrlees.
12. "Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization" (1972), by Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz.
13. "Some International Evidence on Output-Inflation Tradeoffs" (1973), by Robert Lucas, Jr.
14. "The Economic Theory of Agency: The Principal’s Problem" (1973), by Stephen A. Ross.
    →「プリンシパル＝エージェント理論」を参照
15. "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society" (1974), by Anne Osborn Krueger
    →「レントシーキング」を参照
16. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity" (1977), by Avinash Dixit and Joseph Stiglitz.
17. "An Almost Ideal Demand System" (1980), by Angus Deaton and John Muellbauer.
18. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets" (1980), by Sanford J. Grossman and Joseph E. Stiglitz.
19. "Scale Economies, Product Differentiation, and the Pattern of Trade" (1980), by Paul Krugman.
20. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to Be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?" (1981), by Robert J. Shiller.

歴代の編集長（editor）は以下の通り^[8]。