Coauthorship and Subauthorship Patterns in the Journal of Finance

The paper examines the collaboration patterns of coauthors and subauthors in the Journal of Finance from 1994 to 2013. Publishing an article in a leading journal is a reflection of scientific recognition and status (that) the researcher bears in a discipline. We use social networks analysis to map the collaborations of authors, affiliations and nationalities across the years. We identify the most prolific scientists who drive the scientific trends and theory in finance. Our sociological approach is based on Bourdieu’s (1988) concept of social capital and symbolic capital as well as Whitley’s (1984; 2000) concept of norm. We found that the number of maximal cohesive groups the scientists constitute increases across the years. Our network displays small world characteristics; namely the majority of financial economists forms a compact giant component, a plethora of clusters and small average distances between the nodes.