Some of the most influential and well-read papers in economics have been published in the JPE, including:

• "Rules versus Authorities in Monetary Policy" (1936), by Henry C. Simons
• "Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets" (1954), by James M. Buchanan
• "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery" (1954), by H. Scott Gordon
• "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures" (1956), by Charles Tiebout
• "Money wage dynamics and labor market equilibrium" (1968), by Edmund Phelps
• "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities" (1973), by Fischer Black and Myron Scholes.
• "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?" (1974), by Robert Barro
• "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans" (1977), by Finn E. Kydlandand Edward C. Prescott
• "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Nature Rate Model" (1983), by Robert Barro andDavid B. Gordon
• "Bank Runs, Deposit Insurance, and Liquidity" (1983), by Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig
• "Technology Adoption in the Presence of Network Externalities" (1986), by Michael L. Katz and Carl Shapiro
• "International Real Business Cycles" (1992), by David K. Backus, Patrick J. Kehoe, and Finn E. Kydland
• "Law and Finance" (1998), by Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny
• "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy" (2005), by Lawrence J. Christiano, Martin Eichenbaum, andCharles L. Evans