Cross-Affiliation Collaboration and Power Laws for Research Output of Institutions: Evidence from Top Journals in Financial Economics

44 Pages Posted: 5 May 2020 Last revised: 5 May 2021

See all articles by Hui Dong

Hui Dong

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Accountancy

Dan Luo

School of Finance, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Xudong Zeng

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, School of Finance

Zhentao Zou

Wuhan University - Economics and Management School

Date Written: February 1, 2021

Abstract

Cross-affiliation emerges as a new and fast-developing means to promote collaboration in financial research. We find that the average number of affiliations reported per author in the top-three finance journals increases steadily from 1.1 to 1.3 from 1995 to 2016. Scale-free power laws characterize the resulting highly-skewed distributions of top finance journal publications of worldwide institutions. We propose an explanation of the scale-invariance, based on a network model featuring nonlinear growth and linear preferential attachment. The model indicates that success-breeds-success engenders 87% of total publications and hence the dispersion in research output, while accelerated growth of collaboration reduces the heterogeneity.

Keywords: Research Collaboration, Cross-Affiliation, Power Laws, Accelerated Network, Preferential Attachment

JEL Classification: D85, G00

Suggested Citation

Dong, Hui and Luo, Dan and Zeng, Xudong and Zou, Zhentao, Cross-Affiliation Collaboration and Power Laws for Research Output of Institutions: Evidence from Top Journals in Financial Economics (February 1, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3572380 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3572380

Hui Dong

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Accountancy ( email )

No. 777 Guoding Road, Shanghai
Shanghai, 200433
China

Dan Luo (Contact Author)

School of Finance, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics ( email )

Shanghai, 200433
China
+86-21-65904920 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://sof.shufe.edu.cn/80/46/c6894a98374/page.htm

Xudong Zeng

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, School of Finance ( email )

777 Guoding Road
Shanghai, AK Shanghai 200433
China

Zhentao Zou

Wuhan University - Economics and Management School ( email )

Hubei
China

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