Jean L. Heck

Most Frequent Contributors to the Finance Literature

curiosity of those involved in the discipline. This analysis adds to the growing amount of introspective finance literature. Authors whose work has appeared most frequently in finance journals are identified and ranked, along with their academic institutional employers. The analysis includes publications in 15 finance journals from their inaugural issues through the end of 1986, making this study the most comprehensive of its type to date.

Shareholder Theory - How Opponents and Proponents Both Get it Wrong

Shareholder wealth maximization is accepted by most financial economists as the appropriate objective for financial decision-making. Recently, wealth maximization has been criticized by a growing array of opponents for condoning the exploitation of employees, customers, and other stakeholders, and encouraging short-term managerial thinking. Although these critics are misguided, proponents of shareholder theory have helped to create this confusion by exhorting managers to maximize the firms current stock price. Because a firms stock price can be manipulated in the short-term, incentives to increase a firms current stock price can distort operating and investment decisions. When wealth maximization is properly defined as a long-term goal, it is not as narrowly focused as critics believe. The main prescription of shareholder theory-invest in all positive net present value projects-benefits not only shareholders, but also key stakeholders including employees and customers.

Pretest in an Introductory Finance Course: Value Added?

Performance in finance has previously been shown to be affected by performance in prerequisite courses. In this study, the authors hypothesized that student performance in the introductory finance course would be affected by the knowledge brought to the course as measured on a quantitative pretest given at the beginning of the course. They conclude that performance is a function of the quantitative knowledge brought to the course. The results suggest that pretesting for quantitative knowledge may be a good indicator of performance in the introductory finance course and provide students with information to help them target additional work early in the course to offset such deficiencies.

Leading institutional contributors to the elite economic journals

Given the prestige enjoyed by several economic departments, there is a natural curiosity regarding their contributions to the economic literature. This article, analyses the appearance of all academic institutions worldwide in the eight leading economic journals, the ‘Blue Ribbon Eight,’ from 1991 to 2005. We cite those institutions who appear the most, and analyse the composition of appearances across all eight journals to assess their degree of diversity. While it is tempting to use these measures as a ranking of institutions, the analysis is meant to be purely an historical appreciation of the contributions of these admirable institutions.

An analysis of the research productivity of authors appearing in financial education journals

Purpose - This paper seeks to evaluate the research records of scholars contributing articles to the two premier financial education journals – Design/methodology/approach - The names of all authors appearing in the Findings - The majority of the authors appearing in the two education journals have also penned one or more high-impact article, with an average of over three high-impact appearances. Research limitations/implications - The identification of a unique set of the 23 “best” journals in any academic field is an inherently subjective task. The exclusion of additional high-quality journals from this list (especially those from the related fields of accounting and economics) might short change the research records of some education authors. Originality/value - Evidence about the average quality of articles appearing in education journals could be useful to university administrators when evaluating faculty research records for purposes of tenure, promotion, and merit awards.

Volatility in World Equity Markets

Past research suggests that US stock market volatility was greater during the 1930s than in any other 10-year time period and the post-WWII era is a period of relative stability, despite slightly higher volatility levels during the 1970s and 1980s. More recent evidence suggests that volatility levels from 1998 to 2001 have more in common with 1930s levels than with any other time period. We extend this body of research to include the volatility experiences of seven equity markets in the US, Europe, and Asia. For each market, we compare the average monthly volatility of each five-year period, beginning with January 1923, with that for the most recent period in the study, January 1998 to August 2001. We find that when there are statistical differences between current and past levels of volatility, recent volatility is usually significantly greater than past volatility. In only a small number of cases do we find current volatility to be less than past volatility. This suggests that the 1998–2001 period was unusually volatile for most markets examined. We also find that volatility behavior tends to be country-specific and cannot be generalized on an aggregate basis.

A research portfolio approach to evaluating finance journal quality

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to update and extend Danielson and Heck (2014) to provide additional evidence about the relative quality of a set of 23 high-impact finance journals. In particular, the paper summarizes the research records of all scholars contributing articles to each of the 23 journals from 1970 to 2014, and uses this information to identify journals that publish articles by similar sets of authors, and rank the 23 journals based upon publication activity from 2010 to 2014. Design/methodology/approach - – The names of all authors appearing in each of the 23 journals during the 1970 to 2014 period – and the number of appearances by each author – were summarized directly from the journals’ table of contents. From this data, the lifetime (1970-2014) research portfolio of each journal’s average author was quantified for two sub-periods: 1970-2009 and 2010-2014. Using the assumption that a journal’s quality is positively related to its ability to attract submissions from accomplished researchers, this data provides information about the authors’ subjective ranking of finance journals and about how these rankings have changed during the past five years. Findings - – The finance literature experienced rapid growth during 2010-2014, with almost 25 percent of all appearances from 1970 to 2014 occurring in the last five years of the period. Based upon publication activity during 2010-2014, the Research limitations/implications - – The identification of a unique set of the 23 “best” journals in any academic field is an inherently subjective task. Adding journals to (or removing journals from) this population could cause the ranking of some individual journals to shift. Originality/value - – Evidence about the average quality of articles appearing in the leading finance journals is useful when evaluating faculty research records for purposes of tenure, promotion, and merit awards.

The American Economic Review at 100: A Summary of the Journal's Most Frequent Contributing Authors and Institutions

The American Economic Review (AER) celebrates it 100th anniversary during 2011. During this century of contributions to economic thought, the elite group of most frequent contributing authors and academic institutions revealed in this study represent major participants in the unparalleled role that the AER has played in the world of scholarly published research. These contributing authors and academic institutions are most deserving of our admiration.