Academic Finance Journals and Conferences: Prestige and Research Fit

# What are the top academic journals and conferences in academic finance?


# What are the top academic journals and conferences in academic finance?












There is a huge difference between conferences targeted for industry practitioners and for academics and while there is already a thread about ‘Quantitative Finance conferences and journals’ I wanted to start a question thread about ‘Academic Finance Journals & Conferences’ so that I and other academics can weigh in on this. While within academic finance, said 'quantitative finance' is an important subfield, it is only one piece of the puzzle.

I'd like this post to focus specifically on academic finance—journals and conferences relevant for researchers in quantitative and financial economics including Corporate Finance, Asset Pricing, Market Microstructure, Banking and Insurance. Please weigh in if you are an academic (or industry professional that has attended both academic and professional conferences) and have suggestions about conferences or journals to attend or check out. Ensure information provided is verifiable.

## Answer by Ellinoquant (score 3)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/82522

Disclaimer I'd like to start by saying that this answer is based on approximately four years of conversations, observations, and ‘word of mouth’ from within the academic Finance community during my time as a PhD student. I encourage others to weigh in, especially those with more experience, as opinions may vary by region and research area.

### Academic Finance Conferences

As a PhD student in Finance, it is quite clear to me that the best Finance conferences are EFA, AFA and NFA:

- European Finance Association (EFA): This conference is highly organized and gets many Americans as well as Europeans presenting there. People love to travel to Europe.

- American Finance Association (AFA): Personally haven’t attended but highly regarded with only the top schools attending.

- Northern Finance Association (NFA): This is by far the best academic finance conference in Canada, although probably not on the same level as the two above. I have also heard of some folks from the Bank of Canada presenting at this conference in the past and it is always good to see industry practitioners and academics working together.

- Another highly regarded conference is: Financial Management Association (FMA): This conference is known within the academic community as the ‘job market’ conference as many PhD students get flown out for interviews at this conference. However, it is also a top conference.

For non, academics, the above conferences have it all, from Corporate Finance, to Asset Pricing, Market Microstructure and even Insurance. The common theme is that the papers presented at those conferences generally target top Academic Finance Journals (which I discuss below).

However, there are benefits to attending smaller/growing conferences. Please feel free to weigh in on smaller conferences that might be a good place to submit papers.

### Academic Finance Journals

- FT 50: As a general benchmark, the Financial Times 50 (FT50) journals are journals that are good enough to get you tenure at most of the top academic institutions. However, at the top top institutions (such as the U of T, or McGill in Canada, or equivalent (or better) schools in the States such as in the Ivey leagues in the USA), in order to get tenure you might have to publish in what are considered ‘The Top 3’ (which I explain below). In terms of the FT50 though, be careful, just because it is an FT50 journal doesn’t mean that it is acceptable quality to all academics.

- The top 3: It is widely accepted within the academic community that the Journal of Finance (JF) has the #1 spot, with the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics taking the 2nd and 3rd spot. Some debate about which of the two are better. These are tough and considered highly prestigious. Yet, I would say few ‘Quantitative Finance’ papers would be published in them today. I think this is likely because these journals tend to want to publish about novel ideas and underexplored topics, which are often empirical, or theoretical. Writing and coming up with a good motivation of the paper is arguably the most important thing.

- The top 5: In addition to the top 3, I have also heard of some saying the Journal of Financial Quantitative Analysis is ' pretty good'.

- The Best Econ Journals: If you managed to publish top 3 in Finance, very few Finance academics manage to do so, and congratulations, but if you managed to get your Finance paper in top 3 economics journals you might be on another level.. welcome to the world of economics. Some of the economics journals are considered levels above the top 3 finance journals. The two top econ journals to my knowledge where finance papers are often published are: Journal of Political Economy (where the Black Scholes paper was published) and the American Economic Review.

- Corporate Finance / Accounting: Some Corporate finance research such as research on voluntary disclosure, or stock price reactions to information can find themselves publishing in other FT50 journals outside econ or finance. Accounting journals for example, highly overlap. The top accounting journals to my knowledge are The Accounting Review (TAR), The Journal of Accounting Research and the Journal of Accounting and Economics. Another good one at a slightly lower level (to my knowledge) is Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR), Insurance: To my knowledge, I see top Finance academics that work on insurance research publishing in the Journal of Risk and Insurance or Insurance: Mathematics & Economics.

Please share or build on this post. As a new academic with research interests outside of the very quant heavy areas of finance, I know less about quantitative finance specific journals such as Quantitative Finance, or Mathematical Finance. Although, I would say that if I were in this reseasrch area and wanted to look for a journal to publish in, I'd check commonly cited papers in books such as Mathematical Modeling and Computations in Finance (by Oosterlee and Grzelak). I'll leave the rest of that to others who want to weigh in.

## Answer by Annah (score 3)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/82523

You seem to have mentioned some of the most notable conferences. A few others worth considering include:

- SFS Cavalcade (North America and Asia-Pacific) Run by the Society for Financial Studies (same group behind Review of Financial Studies). Gaining prestige fast. Strong focus on asset pricing, corporate finance, and banking. More selective than FMA, less elite than AFA/EFA, but climbing.

- WFA- Western Finance Association Arguably on par with AFA and EFA in terms of prestige. Highly competitive. Submissions typically come from top-tier researchers and are often published in JF, JFE, or RFS. Known for a rigorous selection process and top academic attendance.

- MFA- Midwest Finance Association. More accessible than AFA/WFA/EFA and a good venue for early-career researchers. Often serves as a stepping stone for PhD students or assistant professors to present early working papers. Solid conference for feedback and networking, especially within North America.

Other smaller but more specialized conferences include Society for Financial Studies for their field journals: RCFS- Review of Corporate Finance Studies & RAPS -Review of Asset Pricing Studies. Despite being more niche, they are known for high-quality discussions and tight alignment with current research trends in their respective areas.