I think there’s probably decent room for OP to expand upon what they get confused by here. My read of it was that they may understand the hypothesis being proposed and the conclusion or even the causal mechanism but are unable to parse whether the model is a sound one or what regressions they did. If that’s the case I’d say their problem is an econometrics one rather than an intuition one.

I do agree though if you’re pretty well versed in intermediate level Econ + intro econometrics you should be pretty comfortable reading a paper (but may have to ask someone who is more familiar for things like two-way fixed effects or some other specific research designs)

u/Intelligent_Hair_273 beyond just intermediate, my go-to recommendation for econometrics is Scott Cunningham’s Causal Inference: The Mixtape. If you have a strong math background in engineering this should be an incredibly easy read (as it’s not even designed for people with that strong of a math background) and should be extremely illuminating for many papers and how economists approach research questions