well. I do not say anything that JEP and JEL are bad. articles in JEP and JEL are well cited and influential. that is for sure as the authors are mainly big guys and the articles are written in a nontechnical way. (JEL is a bit more technical.) My point is that most of the articles are not original contributions. Even the articles by the two Pauls in this journal are not original. the ideas are expressed in a more formal way somewhere else. If you meet an assistant professor and say well you guy got a nice paper published at JEP, he or she will be very happy. but if you continue to say then this article will help a lot to get a tenure, his or her response will be 'faint'. So do I.
by the way, I do not think Krugman's article in this journal is excellent. I do have a negative bias towards Krugman although I read most of his papers.