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

School of Economics and Management - 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

School of Economics and Management - Economics and Management School ( email )

Hubei
China

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