Abstract
The research productivity of board members of the top academic finance journals—Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Financial Management—is investigated. Discipline specific benchmarks for substantial research excellence are determined and an evaluation of influential finance journals is presented. Publication in Journal of Finance is the most notable benchmark for selection to the editorial board of any of the finance journals evaluated. The results imply that publishing one article in Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics or Review of Financial Studies in a 5-year period coupled with additional appearances in the broader top tier finance journals would be representative of exceptional research achievement.
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Notes
A quantifiable benchmark derived from some form of external selection criteria like membership on a top journal editorial board allows for the comparison of research output across disciplines. In some areas of academia, scholars publish substantially more works than a successful finance faculty could produce. Having an easily constructed reference point provides support for excellence in cases where non-finance and non-business faculty provide input or approve tenure, hiring, and resource allocation decisions.
In addition to these five journals, Arnold et al. (2003) include the Journal of Business. Unlike the other finance journals, typically, all editorial board members in the Journal of Business are faculty members from the University of Chicago. Furthermore, the Journal of Business ceased publication in November 2006. For these reasons, the Journal of Business is excluded from our study.
Because the primary focus of this study is the research outcomes of the top tier of finance academics, the cohort of interest is the cohort generated by the board members of the top five finance journals. While this is likely to be a relatively homogenous group, this selection filter allows for a more definitive delineation of exceptional research performance.
A brief analysis of finance board member publications within the top five economics journals as listed by Pieters and Baumgartner (2002)—American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economic Studies—shows that while a small group of finance board members may sometimes publish consistently in these five economics journals, these economics journals are not the primary research outlet for the finance board members as a whole. Over the 15-year period evaluated, 56% of finance editorial board members had no appearances in these economics journals. The mean and median appearances of our sample of finance board members in these five economics journals for the period were 1.4 and 0, respectively.
Also, over the period studied, there are 19 members of the editorial boards serving as editor, co-editor, managing editor, or executive editor of the top five finance journals. An analysis of this sub-set of editorial board members indicates that there is little difference between this group of titled editorial board members and other board members with the exception that the editor of Journal of Finance has a higher number of publications in the top five finance journals than the editors of the other four journals.
It is likely that most finance faculty can provide anecdotal evidence of the perceived difference in quantity of research output across the business disciplines and across all academic disciplines. For example, in the sciences or other fields, one might expect a top researcher to have a multiple of research appearances in discipline specific elite and top journals when compared to a top finance faculty. The present research does not address this topic, but does quantify superior output within the discipline and provides a relevant measure for finance.
Again, the actual statistical results are not provided in the exhibit. This provides a more readable text and does not detract from the issues being addressed. The complete results are available upon request.
The results presented are the sum of the top five journals’ means and medians for the two editorial board membership cohort group in Exhibit 4.
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Hardin, W.G., Liano, K., Chan, K.C. et al. Finance editorial board membership and research productivity. Rev Quant Finan Acc 31, 225–240 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11156-007-0067-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11156-007-0067-2