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Renee Adams and Michelle Lowry were awarded the Denis Gromb Award for Outstanding Citizenship in Financial Economics, awarded by the Financial Intermediation Research Society (FIRS), in recognition of their founding of AFFECT (Academic Female Finance Committee). AFFECT is a subcommittee of the American Finance Association, which promotes gender equality in academic finance through research, mentoring, and networking. Founded in 2015, the goal was to advance both science and women’s participation in science, and today AFFECT’s initiatives and best practices have influenced many aspects of the profession. The award is named in memory of Denis Gromb, an extraordinary colleague and human being who gave his time and energy to others with exceptional warmth and generosity — and who embodied the spirit of citizenship that this award celebrates.

With the rapid advancement of generative AI tools and their increasing use in finance research, fundamental questions are emerging about how research will be conducted and assessed going forward. Perspectives vary widely. Some emphasize the pace of technological progress and the possibility that AI could play an increasingly central role in the research process. Others are more cautious and view AI primarily as a tool for mostly well-defined tasks. A more realistic view likely lies between these positions. The research process involves elements such as taste, judgment, values, and intuition, which are not supposed to be delegated to machines. At the same time, the growing capabilities of AI tools suggest that they can play a meaningful and productive role if used thoughtfully. Finally, value tends to accrue to what is relatively scarce, and our systems for evaluating research should adapt to shifts in the relative scarcity of different inputs to and outputs from the research process.

In this context, the profession would benefit from more systematic evidence on what AI systems can produce in a research setting. A clearer understanding of this frontier helps guide the responsible use of these tools and clarify the nature of scholarly contribution. Against this backdrop, we invite submissions to a special session at the 2027 AFA Annual Meeting aimed at showcasing and evaluating the capabilities of AI in finance research, and based on that evidence, reflecting on appropriate norms for their use and the unique aspects of human contribution. Our objective is not to frame the question in terms of replacement, but rather to better understand where AI tools/agents are most effective within the research process and how they can be combined with human insight to enhance research outcomes.

We invite submissions that are predominantly generated by AI. Authors should submit entirely new projects in which AI systems play a systematic role beyond modular, tool-like functions such as variable construction or analytical assistance. We are particularly interested in work where AI contributes across multiple stages of the research process, with limited human involvement. Authors are required to document their initial inputs, data access, model configuration, and full workflow. Submissions will be evaluated by human reviewers using standard academic criteria, including the novelty and importance of the research question, the incremental contribution to the literature, and the quality of execution. In addition, this session will place specific emphasis on the extent to which the research process is carried out by AI systems, with limited human intervention.

From the submission pool, four papers will be selected for presentation in the special session based on both the research contribution and the design and effectiveness of AI use in the workflow. The expectation is not zero human involvement after the initial prompt, but the highest possible research quality per unit of human expertise and effort. In addition, all high-quality submissions will be included in an AFA 2027 online collection to provide a broad view of current AI capabilities across multiple dimensions.

Human discussants will be explicitly tasked with assessing both scientific merit and the nature of human labor embodied in each paper. They will also articulate what AI-generated finance research lacks relative to the profession’s current standards of originality and excellence. These discussions are intended to inform a broader conversation about how evaluation standards should evolve in response to ongoing technological advances.

The organizers will not use non-public information from the submission and review process for their own research. This initiative is intended as a public forum rather than a setting for data collection.

The ground rules for paper submissions are as follows:

• There is no submission fee.
• Papers can be on any topic appropriate to a top journal in finance.
• No humans perform any work on the project, other than the named authors.
• Each author can only submit one paper; and each author can be listed on at most three submissions.
• The investigation of a paper should begin on or after June 1, 2026 with an initial prompt provided to an LLM or AI agent. The submission deadline is August 31, 2026.
• All conversations with AI, including the initial prompt, must be documented and submitted along with the final paper. 
• Humans are allowed to make direct contributions to the project outside of prompts to the AI, but these contributions should also be documented.
• The ideal form of documentation is (1) a text of all conversations with AI, (2) a time log of human activity, and (3) a report on the fraction of project lines (code, writing, and documentation) that were contributed by humans as opposed to AI.

These rules intentionally leave authors wide latitude in how to structure the workflow, and in which tasks the humans adopt given their constrained time. Indeed, this variation is exactly the object of the exploration. The ideal paper is not one with no human involvement, but with maximal quality per unit of human effort.

Submission can be made through the AFA website starting in early June.

Organizers:

Itay Goldstein (Wharton School)

Wei Jiang (Goizueta Business School; Session Chair)

Robert Novy-Marx (Simon Graduate School of Business)

William Mann (Goizueta Business School)

We hope you will join us on May 7 at 1:00 pm (Eastern Time) for a one-hour webinar of the 2025 First Prize Brattle Group Prize winning paper:

Julia Fonseca and Lu Liu for Mortgage Lock‐In, Mobility, and Labor Reallocation.

The webinar will be hosted by Thomas Philippon, Editor of the Journal of Finance, and Shastri Sandy from The Brattle Group. A short paper presentation will be followed by Q&A from the hosts and the audience.

Register and join the webinar with this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NO6qD2oxQfOaSj9cqxfJ7w

New Journal of Finance Referee Honorarium Policy (Effective April 1, 2026): Referees who submit reports certified by the Editor as both timely and high-quality are eligible for a $250 honorarium. To simplify administration and ensure professional tax compliance, reviewers are required to select their preferred compensation method at the time they accept an invitation to review.

Selection Window: Elections must be made via the secure AFA portal within 60 days of accepting the review invitation.

Default Treatment: If no election is made within this 60-day window, the honorarium will be automatically waived and retained by the AFA General Fund to support its mission-based activities, including educational programming and member services.

The official honorarium policy can be found here.

Resolution of Legacy Referee Credits: The American Finance Association (AFA) has amended the Journal of Finance Referee Credit Policy to resolve all outstanding legacy credits accrued under the previous system.

On April 1, 2026, all reviewers with accrued credits will be notified directly via email with specific instructions for the final disposition of their balances. Many of our reviewers choose to reinvest their honoraria into the profession; available options for these legacy credits include:

Cash Payout: An electronic payment via PayPal (subject to standard tax documentation requirements).

Philanthropic Reinvestment: A directed contribution to the AFA APC Support Fund or the Rick Green Prize Fund, supporting the next generation of scholars.

Fee Waiver: A tax-neutral election to decline the credit in favor of the AFA General Fund. Per the policy amendment, any credits not claimed or allocated by the May 31, 2026 deadline will be formally waived and removed from the AFA’s financial records.