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One-and-a-half decades of global research output in Finance: 1990–2004

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Abstract

We provide a ranking of world finance research output by countries and institutions. Based upon 21 finance journals, the top five most productive countries are in the following order: U.S., U.K., Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia. We find that higher per capita GNP, English-speaking countries, and a capital market that offers her investors more protections are associated with higher level of finance literature production. New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and UCLA take the top five spots among the 1,126 academic institutions with most JF-pages appeared in 21 finance journals during the 15-year period from 1990 to 2004. The share of U.S. in the top-100 institutions is overwhelming; 78 out of the top-100 institutions come from U.S. We also show some factors that help to explain the cross-institutional variations among a sub-sample of the institutions. Specifically, faculty size, catalyst effect, and per capita budget are positively associated with research output.

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Notes

  1. Recently, Shanghai Jiao Tong University of China has provided academic ranking of universities in the world. See http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking/htm.

  2. Hong Kong is a special region of China. Since its political system, accounting standard, and rule of laws is significantly different from China, we treat it as a de facto country for the purpose of this study.

  3. We do not include articles, which are “discussions”, “comments”, and “replies”. “Weighted articles” are articles weighted by institutions and co-authorships.

  4. This is defined as the least productive among all authors who are able to publish in at least one of the 21 journals. There are many authors who have never published in these 21 journals.

  5. Top-5 journals are: Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Journal of Business.

  6. The average length (in terms of JF-pages) for a typical article in all journals gradually increased over 1990–2004. The average JF-pages in 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2004 for all articles in all journals are 13.77, 16.96, 21.04, and 22.76 pages, respectively.

  7. The impact of English language on research output differs over disciplines. For example, for economics, a discipline that is very close to finance yet is much broader in scope, empirical evidence suggests that the impact of English language on research output is less important than finance. Among the top-100 research programs ranked based upon 30 top economics journals, all of which are English language journals, Netherland takes four spots, Germany two, France four, and Spain also four. This stands a sharp contrast to finance research (see Kalaitzidakis et al. (2003).

  8. One would question if these regression results are unique to the finance research, or similar results will also obtain for other academic disciplines. Although we could not replicate the same analyses for other academic disciplines, other ranking studies suggest that it is highly unlikely. For example, Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranks top-500 world universities in science areas using criteria such as articles published in Nature and Science, the number of Nobel-prized faculty, and articles in Science Citation Index as well as Social Science Citation Index. The ranking picture is quite different from our raking in finance. Although US institutions still dominates the top-100 in Jiao Tong ranking, 48 out of 100 are non-US institutions. And unlike finance, Tokyo University ranks 14th in the world, while Kyoto University 21st. See http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/top500list.htm.

  9. The remaining universities are presented in the authors’ website.

  10. There are only nine institutions from non-English speaking nations. However, English language advantage alone clearly cannot explain why other disciplines, including natural science and economics, are not so dominated by English-speaking nations.

  11. Data obtained from the Finance Faculty Directory 2002–2003, by James Hasselback, Prentice Hall.

  12. The data is available at http://www.aacsb.edu/General/InstLists.asp?lid = 2.

  13. JF-pages is used as the dependent variable. Linear model is employed for two reasons. First, the degree of skewness in JF-pages based upon these 341 AACSB accredited and more research-intensive universities is substantially less than that of cross-country analysis based on the whole sample. Second, linear model fits this specific data set significantly better than the log-linear transformation. Nevertheless, log-linear model draws the same conclusions.

  14. The results in Table 6 are conditioned on schools having at least one publication.

  15. It is calculated as follows: (887–450)/13 = 33.6. A 50 percentile institution produces a total of 887 JF-pages, while a 75 percentile institution has 450 JF-pages. Note the cumulative frequency distribution illustrated in this section is based upon this subsample of 341 institutions. Interpretations cannot be extrapolated to the whole sample.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge helpful comments from an anonymous referee and Christine Lai for her excellent programming assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Finance, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, 42101, USA

    Kam C. Chan

  2. Department of Economics and Finance, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, 45469-2251, USA

    Carl R. Chen & Peter P. Lung

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  1. Kam C. Chan
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  2. Carl R. Chen
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  3. Peter P. Lung
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Correspondence to Carl R. Chen.

Appendix: Gini coefficients of finance publishing (1990–2004)

Appendix: Gini coefficients of finance publishing (1990–2004)

We compute the Gini coefficient according to Damgaard (2003). Gini coefficient measures the inequality in a population. We calculate the coefficient, G, as:

$$ \hbox{G} =\frac{\sum_{{\rm i}=1}^{\rm n} \sum_{{\rm J}=1}^{\rm n} \vert \hbox{x}_{\rm i}-\hbox{x}_{\rm j}\vert}{2\hbox{n}^{2}\mu} $$

where μ = arithmetic mean,

n = size of population,

xi = JF-pages of ith institution.

   
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Chan, K.C., Chen, C.R. & Lung, P.P. One-and-a-half decades of global research output in Finance: 1990–2004. Rev Quant Finan Acc 28, 417–439 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11156-007-0018-y

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