Critical Finance Review
Editor's Page
The CFR seeks top finance papers, just like the JF, JFE, RFS, and JFQA. It differs in that it prefers more controversial, unusual, and critical papers. It can take chances. The types of paper that maximize the distance between the CFR and the other journals are
- papers that point out that previous papers and/or literatures are wrong;
- papers that are considered correct but obvious by half of the profession and obviously incorrect by the other half;
- papers that upset half the profession.
The hand-collected per-paper citation rankings of the CFR are near the top-3 now, but they are not the correct metric for the CFR. About half of the papers in the CFR critique other work. Some of these papers are influential not because they grow literatures, but because they reduce them. This means their impact is not well measured by future cites. (If anything, it should be measured by their impact in reducing cites, including to themselves.) A better metric for the CFR influence in the profession are the number of papers assigned in PhD class reading lists. For papers published in the last 5 years, casual observation suggests that the CFR dominates the top-3 journals per paper already.
Overall, papers published in the CFR have visibility roughly on par with the top 3.
Clarification:: The CFR is peer-reviewed, just like any other good academic journal. It is not an editorial journal. The CFR is a peer-reviewed and refereed journal—in the same sense that Nature and Science are. Referees help improve and assess papers. Yet, comparing the CFR to other top finance journals, the editorial decision of whether a submission is interesting is made relatively more often by the editor and less often by the referee. All finance journals do this; the CFR just does it a little more.
Request for Proposals: The CFR will now accept proposals for a special issue on Volatility and Higher Moments (Replication-Plus)
Great News: Elsevier's scientific citation site SCOPUS has accepted the CFR into its set of journals. Thomson's Web of Science has now created an "Emerging Sciences Citation Index," which makes citation tracking easy, too. (The CFR is also covered in Cabell's International, EconLit/JEL, Electronic Journals Library, Google Scholar, INSPEC,and RePEc/IDEAS.)
Thanks for the shoutout: https://www.proprietarydataanalytics.com/ and the Boston Arch Diocese.
2012, Vol 1
- Editorial
- Corporate Debt Maturity and the Real Effects of the 2007 Credit Crisis
- Capital Structure Choices
- Testing Factor-Model Explanations of Market Anomalies
- The Long-Run Risks Model and Aggregate Asset Prices: An Empirical Assessment
- An Empirical Evaluation of the Long-Run Risks Model for Asset Prices
2013, Vol 2
- Should Benchmark Indices Have Alpha? Revisiting Performance Evaluation
- The Housing Wealth Effect: The Crucial Roles of Demographics, Wealth Distribution and Wealth Shares
- Wealth Effects Revisited 1975-2012
- Editor's Letter by Michael Weisbach
- A Critique of Recent Quantitative and Deep-Structure Modeling in Capital Structure Research and Beyond
- Dynamic Corporate Finance is Useful: A Comment on Welch (2013)
- Model Before Measurement
2014, Vol 3
- Bank Deregulation and Racial Inequality in America
- Do Concentrated Institutional Investors Really Reduce Executive Compensation Whilst Raising Incentives?
- Institutional Investors and Executive Compensation Redux:
A Comment on "Do Concentrated Institutional Investors Really Reduce Executive Compensation Whilst Raising Incentives" - Incentive Contracts are not Rigged by Powerful CEOs
- Compensation Rigging by Powerful CEOs: A Reply and Cross-Sectional Evidence
2016, Vol 5-1
- Holderness, Clifford G., Problems Using Aggregate Data to Infer Individual Behavior: Evidence from Law, Finance, and Ownership Concentration.
- Holderness, Clifford G., Law and Ownership Reexamined.
- Martijn Cremers and Hongjun Yan, Uncertainty and Valuations.
- Lubos Pastor and Pietro Veronesi, Uncertainty and Valuations: A Comment.
- Joseph Gerakos and Juhani T. Linnainmaa, Market reactions to tangible and intangible information revisited.
- Sheridan Titman and Kent Daniel. Another Look at Market Responses to Tangible and Intangible Information.
2016, Vol 5-2
- Thomas Davidoff. Supply Constraints Are Not Valid Instrumental Variables for Home Prices Because They Are Correlated With Many Demand Factors.
- Vladimir Atanasov and Bernard Black. Shock-Based Causal Inference in Corporate Finance and Accounting Research.
- Jonathan E. Ingersoll, Jr., Cumulative Prospect Theory, Aggregation, and Pricing.
- Blake Phillips, Kuntara Pukthuanthong, and P. Raghavendra Rau, Past performance may be an illusion: Performance, flows, and fees in mutual funds.
- Bhagwan Chowdhry and Eduardo Schwartz, How Should Firms Hedge Market Risk?
- Russell P. Robins and Geoffrey Peter Smith, No More Weekend Effect.
2017, Vol 6-1
- Christoph Schneider and Oliver Spalt, Acquisitions as Lotteries? The Selection of Target-Firm Risk and its Impact on Merger Outcomes.
- Katherine Guthrie and Jan Sokolowsky, Obesity and Household Financial Distress.
- Assaf Eisdorfer and Elizabeth Kohl, Corporate Sport Sponsorship and Stock Returns: Evidence from the NFL.
- M. Fabricio Perez and Andriy Shkilko, Catering Through Nominal Share Prices Revisited.
- Marshall E. Blume and Donald B. Keim, The Changing Nature of Institutional Investors.
2017, Vol 6-2
- Kent Daniel and Robert J. Hodrick and Zhongjin Lu. The Carry Trade: Risks and Drawdowns.
- John Y. Campbell, Adi Sunderam, and Luis M. Viceira, Inflation Hedges? The Changing Risks of Nominal Bonds.
- Wen-Chyan Ke and Hsiou-Wei William Lin, An Improved Version of the Volume-Synchronized Probability of Informed Trading (VPIN).
- David Easley and Marcos Lopez de Prado and Maureen O'Hara, An Improved Version of the Volume-Synchronized Probability of Informed Trading (VPIN): A Comment.
- Nicola Borri and Giuseppe Ragusa. Sensitivity, Moment Conditions, and the Risk-free Rate in Yogo (2006) .
Forthcoming Papers
2018 and Beyond --- Cite as Volume 7+ for now
- Kathryn Dewenter, Catherine Schrand, and Clare Wang. The impact of currency risk on US MNCs: New evidence from returns and cross-border investment around currency crises.
- Anna von Reibnitz, When Opportunity Knocks: Cross-Sectional Return Dispersion and Active Fund Performance.
- Dudley, Evan, and Christopher James. Capital-structure changes around IPOs.
- Alti, Aydogan. Capital-structure changes around IPOs: A Comment.
- Lewis Gaul and Jonathan Jones and Pinar Uysal. Takeover Defense Provisions, Firm Volatility, and Corporate Loan Finance.
- Ming Dong and Marie Dutordoir and Chris Veld. Why do firms issue convertible bonds? .
- James W. Kolari and Seppo Pynnonen and Ahmet M. Tuncez. On long-run stock returns after corporate events .
- Hendrik Bessembinder and Feng Zhang. Long Run Stock Returns after Corporate Events Revisited .
- Martin Wallmeier. Mispricing of Index Options with Respect to Stochastic Dominance Bounds?
- George M. Constantinides and Michal Czerwonko and Jens Carsten Jackwerth and Stylianos Perrakis. Mispricing of Index Options with Respect to Stochastic Dominance Bounds? A Reply.
- Jun Kyung Auh and Suresh Sundaresan. Repo Priority Right and the Bankruptcy Code.
- Edwin J. Elton and Martin J. Gruber and Andre de Souza. Fund of Funds Selection of Mutual Funds.
- Andrew C. Chang and Phillip Li. Is Economics Research Replicable? Sixty Published Papers from Thirteen Journals Say "Often Not".
- Samangi Bandaranayake, Kuntal Das, and W. Robert Reed. Are Competitive Banking Systems Really More Stable?.
- Scott Cederburg, Michael S. O'Doherty, N. E. Savin, and Ashish Tiwari. Conditional Benchmarks and Predictors of Mutual Fund Performance.
- Stewart C. Myers and James A. Read, Jr. Real Options, Taxes and Financial Leverage.
Liquidity: Replications, Extensions, and Critique (2018, Vol 8-?)
The CFR has invited replications of the three most influential liquidity papers of the last 20 years (RFP Liquidity call). The papers and lead authors will be
- pastor-stambaugh 2003:
- jeffrey pontiff
- Hongtao Li and Robert Novy-Marx and Mihail Velikov. Liquidity risk and asset pricing, Oct 2017.
- acharya-pedersen 2005:
- Eiichiro Kazumori
- Craig W. Holden and Jayoung Nam. Testing the LCAPM vs. Generalized Liquidity-Adjusted Asset Pricing: New Evidence and New Perspectives.
- amihud 2002:
- Larry Harris and Andrea Amato. Illiquidity and Stock Returns: Cross-Section and Time-Series Effects: A Replication. Jan 2018, accepted.
- Jozef Drienko and Tom Smith and Anna von Reibnitz. A Review of the Return-Illiquidity Relationship, Feb 2017. accepted.
Please do not consider these papers definitive until we have collected them and offered the original authors a chance to respond. Chase Deehan has agreed to publish documented replicating R code.
Future Replication Possibilities (incl. currently influential paper reference)
This website is also available in encrypted https://cfr.ivo-welch.info form in case you are paranoid.