Positivism in finance and its implication for the diversification finance research: Diversifying finance research: From financialization to sustainability

This paper is a complementary comment to the article recently published in IRFA by Thomas Lagoarde-Segot on the necessity of diversification of modelling in finance. In his claim, the author explained that financial concepts used by the mainstream are not neutral because they refer to a particular ethical judgement mainly focused on the shareholders' interest. In this comment, I explain that this ethical judgement historically results from the role playing by the Gaussian distribution in finance: while this statistical framework gave the first scientific foundations to finance in the 1960s, its symmetrical configuration implies that negative changes occur with the same probability than positive ones. In this context, all potential intervention (regulation) could only interfere (disturb) this “ethically fair situation” within the only perturbing element is the shareholder whose behaviours are likely to influence the market. After having explained that this reasoning is based on an a priori statement about observational facts (in opposition with positivism), I present this situation as an opportunity for current researchers in finance to clarify their implicit assumptions; which would open the door to a diversification of modelling in finance as Lagoarde-Segot promoted it in his IRFA article.     

Diversifying financial research: Final remarks

This paper is a response to Christopher Schinckus (in press) comments on my 2015 International Review of Financial Analysis paper Diversifying financial research: from financialization to sustainability. I first attempt to summarize our argument, and then attempt to draw out further implications for the diversification of academic finance, by connecting our discussion to current debates in the field of critical management studies (CMS).     

A pragmatist approach to transdisciplinarity in sustainability research: From complex systems theory to reflexive science

The importance of questioning the values, background assumptions, and normative orientations shaping sustainability research has been increasingly acknowledged, particularly in the context of transdisciplinary research, which aims to integrate knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge. Nonetheless, the concept of reflexivity underlying transdisciplinary research is not sufficiently clarified and, as a result, is hardly able to support the development of social learning and social experimentation processes needed to support sustainability transitions. In particular, the concept of reflexivity is often restricted to building social legitimacy for the results of a new kind of ‘complex systems science’, with little consideration of the role of non-scientific expertise and social innovators in the design of the research practice itself.The key hypothesis of the paper is that transdisciplinary research would benefit from adopting a pragmatist approach to reflexivity. Such an approach relates reflexivity to collective processes of problem framing and problem solving through joint experimentation and social learning that directly involve the scientific and extra-scientific expertise. To test this hypothesis, the paper proposes a framework for analysing the different types of reflexive processes that play role in transdisciplinary research. The main conclusion of the analysis is the need to combine conventional consensus-oriented deliberative approaches to reflexivity with more open-ended, action-oriented transformative approaches.     

Finance and sustainability: From ideology to utopia

This paper is based on the observation that there is a contradiction between the current demands for sustainability and the way the financial system works. Beginning with a discussion of the epistemological assumptions underlying financial theory, it seeks to show how it may be viewed as an Ideology for the financialization of economies and societies. We use the Ricoeurian notion of the cultural imagination to develop a counterpoint Utopia, which we call Finance As A Common. The reflexivity enabled by this Utopia reveals the mental structures in which financial actors are embedded. It also allows us to plot possible pathways for the reconstruction of the financial system, including local currencies, and the renewal of financial knowledge.     

From innovation to obfuscation: continuous time finance fifty years later

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - This paper surveys several of the most important applications of the continuous time finance paradigm in portfolio selection and derivatives pricing....     

Indigenous sustainable finance as a research field: A systematic literature review on indigenising ESG,sustainability and indigenous community practices

Sustainable finance research has come into its own as an established area in the finance literature. The increased awareness of sustainability and global concerns around environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, particularly among institutional investors, has catalysed a shift towards greater research and publications in this area. Accompanying this is the emerging body of work being produced on indigenous investments and indigenous community practices. These nascent strands of literature tell a story of the shift that is taking place within the finance field. To chart this shift and create a harmonised view of these bodies of work, this paper conducts a systematic literature review of the significant nexus between sustainable investments and indigenous approaches to sustainability. We present a framework for conceptualising and characterising the various stands of literature and, in so doing, make the case for Indigenous Sustainable Finance (ISF) as a distinct disciplinary field. This paper argues that ISF is distinct from mainstream sustainable finance and other social and management sciences and constitutes a legitimate, well-defined sub-field of research in its own right.     

Undergraduate research: the senior thesis in finance

An undergraduate senior thesis offers the individual student an opportunity to pursue a topic of special interest or in greater depth than available in a traditional course. This paper describes the Senior Thesis in Finance required of all finance majors enrolled in The College of New Jersey, specifies the objectives of the thesis, and offers the results on an assessment survey of alumni, who completed the senior thesis.     

Introduction to recent research topics in banking and finance

This note introduces a set of papers that have been presented to the third International Symposium on Computational Economics and Finance (ISCEF), organized in Paris on April 10–12, 2014, focusing on topics in banking and financial markets. This selection of papers emphasizes the role of the development of research in quantitative finance that benefited from the progress in econometric modeling and the availability of high frequency data. These studies carried in the context of the global financial crisis provide different interesting findings enabling to better understand financial market dynamics and banking sectors. We briefly analyze in this note their methodologies and discuss their empirical findings.     

100 research ideas: extending the frontiers of research in corporate finance

Where can one systematically find research ideas? I propose a scheme to classify and broadly generalize the sources of inspiration for research topics, with emphasis on corporate finance. In the process, I propose 100 new research topics awaiting the brave and persistent.     

Predicting success in entrepreneurial finance research

We study the relationship between buyout and venture capital (VC) funds’ returns, and more typically available proxies—exits via M&A or IPO. We further explore the effects of filters on the selection of M&As and IPOs (to emphasize successes), on the relationship. We show that some of these filters can reduce the count of exits by as much as 80% without significantly improving the correlation between exits and fund returns. We also show that for venture capital funds, counting acquisitions that are at least twice the amount of funding raised results in the best correlation between exits via an acquisition and fund returns. Finally, when the sample comprises young startups – that are perhaps not yet ready for any form of exit – follow-on funding, employment, website ranking, and patent activity can be used as proxies for exits in place of IPOs or acquisitions.     

The problematics of financialization: Critical reflections

Andersson et al. (this issue) add to developing literature on financialization in reflecting on the bio-pharma industry. Their theorising is both an account of a process of financialization and a problematisation with a substantive resonance. The concern here is to contribute to a critical appreciation of the problematics of financialization through reflecting upon the developing thesis as indicated in the Andersson et al.’s study.     

Sixty years of research leadership: contributing authors and institutions to the journal of finance

While corporate executives freely admit that they work in a jungle, faculty members in institutions of higher learning are supposed to pretend that they work in the relaxed atmosphere of an informal English garden (Alice Vandermeulen, 1975).

The Journal of Finance was the first pure finance journal to emphasize research, and it has been the undisputed “gold standard” in academic finance literature for the past 60 years. This study identifies the contributors to JF over these 60 years—the authors, the institutions employing the authors, and the institutions granting PhDs to the authors. The prolific authors listed in this article make it look easy, like Alice’s relaxed English garden, but the information reported herein suggests otherwise.

A snapshot of public finance research from immediately prior to the pandemic: IIPF 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped public policies and government finances, it has also influenced the topics that public finance economists are researching. Because the 2020 International Institute of Public Finance Congress featured papers that were submitted prior to the start of the pandemic, the Congress allows us to reflect on the state of research prior to the pandemic’s shock to both fiscal policies and our worldview. In this article, the Editors of International Tax and Public Finance reflect on interesting papers that were presented at this internationally representative conference in public economics. The exercise provides insight on where the field of public economics was heading prior to the pandemic and will provide a yardstick to see how the field evolves in the coming years afterward.

     

Sustainable finance and blockchain: A systematic review and research agenda

Sustainable finance and blockchain studies have garnered considerable interest recently. but there has been no systematic analysis of blockchain in sustainable finance to far. To fill this gap, based on the theme structure of blockchain research in the field of renewable finance from November 1, 2008 to January 31, 2022, this paper proposes a multi-level and all-round comprehensive bibliometric method (Co-occurrence Analysis method, Natural Language Processing method, and Exploratory Factor Analysis method) to comprehend the mode, process, and mechanism of the integration of them. The findings indicate that: (1) Blockchain has been widely used in many industries involved in sustainable finance; (2) Blockchain will have a long-term impact on Sustainable Finance in the fields of smart city and sharing economy; (3) Blockchain can be deeply integrated with other technologies to promote the diversified development of sustainable finance. Additionally, we highlight trends and research directions regarding blockchain in sustainable finance research.     

BeFi meets DeFi: A behavioral finance approach to decentralized finance asset pricing

This systematic literature review summarizes the extant research in the Behavioral Finance (BeFi) and digital asset spaces to understand better the interactions of behavioral effects on the pricing of assets constructed, enabled, and exchanged in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) markets. We find that asset pricing in these rapidly evolving markets is better explained through BeFi than through traditional finance (TradFi) theory. Investor attention, sentiment, heuristics and biases, and network effects interact to form a highly volatile and dynamic market. We offer a deterministic research framework with propositions for future research. We further provide investors with a theoretically and empirically supported structure to better inform their decisions through an understanding of BeFi applications to DeFi.     

Drivers of research impact: evidence from the top three finance journals

We study the characteristics of all published papers in the top three finance journals (JF, JFE and RFS), and how these paper characteristics affect the number of citations in Google Scholar and the Web of Science database. First, we find the characteristics in the universalist perspective remain constant while the characteristics in the constructivist and presentation perspectives increase over time. Second, some characteristics are significantly different between the high-impact and the low-impact papers. Third, paper quality, research method, journal placement and paper age are the most important drivers. Last, different drivers play different roles in different journals.     

On measuring serial correlation: Implications for finance and accounting research studies

Accounting and finance studies that measure serial correlation implicitly make two assumptions. One, the studies assume that the sample estimate of the autocorrelation coefficient is unbiased. The assumption is intuitively appealing, but incorrect. This article provides a measure of the size of the bias. Two, the studies assume that the target of the time series is constant over time. However, over a long period target values may change. This article models the general case in which not only do random shocks affect actual values, but also random changes affect target values.     

Meta-analysis in finance research: Opportunities,challenges, and contemporary applications

The number of empirical research studies in finance exhibits a strong upward trajectory, which often produces large differences in empirical results and impedes the drawing of consistent conclusions in relation to the phenomenon under examination. This creates demand for methods like meta-analysis that objectively consolidate and evaluate the empricial literature in a research field. Meta-analysis is a group of statistical methods to aggregate prior empirical studies, to discover and explain consistencies as well as inconsistencies within reported results, and to detect and filter out distorting effects from publication selection or model misspecification. While meta-analysis is a standard tool for research synthesis and evidence-based decisions in many related research disciplines, such as management, marketing, or economics, it has been rarely applied in finance. The goal of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview and discussion of the opportunities of meta-analytical research in finance, to present recent applications of meta-analysis in finance, as well as to discuss related challenges and limitations. Thereby, we aim at increasing the awareness and acceptance of meta-analysis and stimulating its future application in the finance field.