The Editor will assign each submitted paper to a Coeditor, who will be responsible for evaluating the paper and ultimately making a decision on it. A Coeditor will typically send a paper to one or more referees, one of whom will in many cases be an Associate Editor of the journal.

Authors given the option to revise and resubmit a paper are expected to complete a revision within one year of being notified of the decision.* A revised version submitted after one year after the author is notified of the decision will normally be treated as a new submission, though the coeditor handling the paper has the discretion to treat such a paper as a resubmission. If a paper is returned after two years, there will be no presumption that it will be sent to the original co-editor (especially if he/she has left the board).

* A deadline of 18 months applies to papers whose authors were notified before March 12, 2015.

Accepted papers will be available on the journal website soon after acceptance. They will be copy-edited and formatted before publication. Papers are published in the order of receipt of the final versions. Through June 2009, issues were published quarterly and grouped into yearly volumes for hard-copy printing. Starting in 2010, the journal is published three times a year, in January, May, and September, with every other issue of Econometrica.