Back in long-ago days, it made sense to put figures last in paper drafts because it was so much work to fit them into the text.
- Nowadays, you’re just making it harder for me to referee (er, I mean read) the paper. Why make it so hard for the reader to enjoy your paper?
- Sure, NBER papers (or most of them) leave the figures and tables until the end, too, but why shouldn’t we all try to be better than those folks in every way we can, especially minor ones like this?
I’d say that double-spacing is unnecessary, but there’s still good reason to allow a reader/reviwer more room for comments and edits on each page even though we’re no longer writing between the lines.