I tried to compile a new AEA article and it works as expected but ONLY if I don't use any bibtex citations.

After I add

bibliography: orange-economy-bibliography.bib

to the YAML header I get an error that I can not fix:

! Package natbib Error: Bibliography not compatible with author-year citations.

The .bib file itself is properly formatted and works flawlessly with 'knitr' when the following YAML settings are specified:

output:
  pdf_document:
    latex_engine: pdflatex
    keep_tex: true 
bibliography: orange-economy-bibliography.bib
csl: harvard-cite-them-right.csl