From Psychology, Law, Accounting and Economics: Measuring the Influence of Finance Journals in the Social Sciences

We assess citation based measures to determine the relative influence of financial research in the social sciences. Additionally, we examine the breadth and depth of influence exerted by six broad-ranging finance journals. We find that the leading finance journals, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies, are highly comparable and among the most influential journals in the social sciences with influence extending well beyond finance. Further, we find that Financial Management, the Journal of Banking and Finance and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis serve different segments of the research community. Finally, we demonstrate the decided differences to which the degree of influence exerted by the journals is determined by their self-citation rates.