By name: jbf-topic-selection description: Use when deciding whether an empirical or theoretical finance manuscript fits the Journal of Banking & Finance (JBF) scope, especially banking, financial intermediation, financial institutions, capital markets, investments, corporate finance, or financial regulation.
Topic Selection (jbf-topic-selection)
When to trigger
- A finance paper could go to JBF, JFI, JCF, JFQA, RFS, or a field journal and you need a fit call
- The project is about banks, intermediaries, regulation, liquidity, credit, investments, or capital markets
- You need to decide whether the paper is strong enough for JBF or should be routed elsewhere
JBF fit bar
JBF is not a generic "any finance paper" outlet. It rewards papers that make a clear contribution to banking, financial intermediation, institutions, markets, investments, corporate finance, or regulation. A good JBF topic usually has:
- A finance question with institutional content: banks, lenders, funds, markets, regulation, disclosure, risk-taking, liquidity, credit supply, or capital allocation.
- A credible design or model: empirical identification, careful data construction, or a theoretical mechanism with testable implications.
- External relevance: implications for financial institutions, investors, regulators, or corporate financing decisions.
- A result that changes a finance reader's prior rather than only adding a new sample, country, or dataset.
Strong fits
- Bank capital, liquidity, risk-taking, supervision, stress tests, or credit supply
- Financial intermediation, shadow banking, fintech lending, syndicated loans
- Market liquidity, trading, asset pricing with institutional frictions
- Corporate finance questions where banks or financing constraints are central
- Regulation/policy shocks with clear finance mechanisms
Weak fits
- Pure accounting, management, macro, or development papers where finance is only context
- Asset-pricing factor papers with no JBF-specific institutional contribution
- Country case studies without credible identification or generalizable finance insight
- Routine event studies without an economic mechanism
Neighbor-venue routing matrix
| Paper profile | Better-first venue | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Intermediation theory or structural banking model with a tight mechanism | Journal of Financial Intermediation | narrower, mechanism-first intermediation outlet |
| Systemic risk / macroprudential policy evaluation | Journal of Financial Stability | stability-policy core audience |
| Monetary transmission through banks, macro-banking | JMCB | money-macro referee pool |
| Corporate finance where banks are peripheral | Journal of Corporate Finance | firm-side audience |
| Broad empirical banking/markets/regulation with solid identification and a policy angle | JBF | wide empirical scope, bank-focused readership |
These are stylized scope contrasts; check each journal's current aims-and-scope before final routing.
Worked fit call (illustrative)
Candidate question: "Do BNPL fintech lenders substitute for credit-card lending by small banks?"
- Institutional content: yes — nonbank entry into consumer credit and the bank funding response; fit bar 1 passes.
- Design: staggered fintech entry across local markets with bank × market data; passes only if entry timing is defensibly exogenous (route to
jbf-identification-strategy). - Prior-changing: if the answer is "entry cuts incumbent card balances by an illustrative 6%," it shifts priors on fintech substitution versus market expansion — JBF-relevant.
- Verdict: strong JBF fit; JFI only if the paper builds a substitution model first.
Two-minute screening questions
- Which intermediation friction sits at the center: capital, liquidity, information, competition, or regulation?
- Would a bank supervisor, risk officer, or lender change a decision given the result?
- Does the design produce a magnitude in finance units (basis points, percentage points of assets) a referee can benchmark?
- Is there a JBF-relevant strand where this is the next paper rather than a duplicate?
Answer all four before routing onward; a "no" on question 1 or 4 usually means reroute rather than rewrite.
Scope-based desk risks
- Banking data used to answer a labor, IO, or development question → desk risk: the finance mechanism is incidental.
- A single-country banking-crisis case study without generalizable variation → desk risk unless the institutional setting isolates a mechanism.
- A risk-model horse race with no intermediation or policy stake → reroute, or add an economic application before submitting.
Output format
[Question] one sentence
[JBF fit] strong / possible / weak
[Core finance mechanism] ...
[Evidence or model needed] ...
[Closest alternatives] JFI / JCF / JFQA / field journal / other
[Next step] jbf-literature-positioning or reroute