The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Law, Finance, and Firm Growth

Published: 12/17/2002   |   DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00084

Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Vojislav Maksimovic

We investigate how differences in legal and financial systems affect firms' use of external financing to fund growth. We show that in countries whose legal systems score high on an efficiency index, a greater proportion of firms use long‐term external financing. An active, though not necessarily large, stock market and a large banking sector are also associated with externally financed firm growth. The increased reliance on external financing occurs in part because established firms in countries with well‐functioning institutions have lower profit rates. Government subsidies to industry do not increase the proportion of firms relying on external financing.


U.S. Banking Deregulation, Small Businesses, and Interstate Insurance of Personal Income

Published: 11/28/2007   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2007.01292.x

YULIYA DEMYANYK, CHARLOTTE OSTERGAARD, BENT E. SØRENSEN

We estimate the effects of deregulation of U.S. banking restrictions on interstate personal income insurance for the period 1970 to 2001. Interstate income insurance occurs when personal income reacts less than one‐to‐one to state‐specific output shocks. We find that insurance improved after banking deregulation, with a larger effect in states where small businesses are more important and on proprietors' income than on other components of personal income. Our explanation centers on the role of banks as a prime source of small business finance and on the close intertwining of the personal and business finances of small business owners.


Firm‐Level Climate Change Exposure

Published: 02/28/2023   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13219

ZACHARIAS SAUTNER, LAURENCE VAN LENT, GRIGORY VILKOV, RUISHEN ZHANG

We develop a method that identifies the attention paid by earnings call participants to firms' climate change exposures. The method adapts a machine learning keyword discovery algorithm and captures exposures related to opportunity, physical, and regulatory shocks associated with climate change. The measures are available for more than 10,000 firms from 34 countries between 2002 and 2020. We show that the measures are useful in predicting important real outcomes related to the net‐zero transition, in particular, job creation in disruptive green technologies and green patenting, and that they contain information that is priced in options and equity markets.


Capital Structures in Developing Countries

Published: 12/17/2002   |   DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00320

Laurence Booth, Varouj Aivazian, Asli Demirguc‐Kunt, Vojislav Maksimovic

This study uses a new data set to assess whether capital structure theory is portable across countries with different institutional structures. We analyze capital structure choices of firms in 10 developing countries, and provide evidence that these decisions are affected by the same variables as in developed countries. However, there are persistent differences across countries, indicating that specific country factors are at work. Our findings suggest that although some of the insights from modern finance theory are portable across countries, much remains to be done to understand the impact of different institutional features on capital structure choices.



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