Patterns of Productivity in the Finance Literature: A Study of the Bibliometric Distributions

Patterns of Productivity in the Finance Literature: A Study of the Bibliometric Distributions

This study finds a bibliometric regularity in the finance literature that the number of authors publishing n papers is about 1/nc of those publishing one paper. We find that the finance literature conforms very well to the inverse square law (c = 2) if data are taken from a large collection of journ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of finance (New York) Vol. 45; no. 1; pp. 301 - 309
Main Authors: CHUNG, KEE H., COX, RAYMOND A. K.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-03-1990
American Finance Association
Blackwell Publishers Inc
Subjects:
Authors
Bibliometrics
Finance
Financial economics
Frequency distribution
Information science
Inverse square law
Literature
Lotka's Law
Lotkas law
Mathematical models
Productivity
Publishing industry
Shorter Papers
Studies
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Summary:This study finds a bibliometric regularity in the finance literature that the number of authors publishing n papers is about 1/nc of those publishing one paper. We find that the finance literature conforms very well to the inverse square law (c = 2) if data are taken from a large collection of journals. When applied to individual finance journals, we find that values of c range from 1.95 to 3.26. We also find that top-rated journals have higher concentrations among their contributors. This implies that the phenomenon "success breeds success" is more common in higher quality publications.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-ZLM65M6X-K
ArticleID:JOFI5095
istex:7350CF79C0589A241E0758E1B9C0C0694E1A7B78
Department of Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, Memphis State University and Department of Finance, Central Michigan University, respectively. This paper was completed while Cox was at Memphis State University. We are grateful to an anonymous referee and the editor, René Stulz, for their helpful comments.
ISSN:0022-1082
1540-6261
DOI:10.1111/j.1540-6261.1990.tb05095.x