Literature Positioning (jfe-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• The literature section is a chronological list of "X did A; Y did B"
• A referee could plausibly say "this is already in JF/RFS/JFE paper Z"
• You cannot state in two sentences how you differ from the closest paper
• You are unsure which strands (corporate finance, asset pricing, theory) you must engage

How JFE referees read positioning

JFE referees are domain experts who know the frontier. They are unforgiving about two things: (1) failing to cite and engage the closest prior work, especially recent top-3 finance papers, and (2) overclaiming novelty against work you simply did not read. Positioning is an argument, not a bibliography.

Know the JFE canon you are extending or revising, and attribute it correctly: Jensen & Meckling (1976) and Fama & French (1993, 2015) are JFE; Banz (1981) size effect is JFE; but Carhart (1997) momentum-persistence is Journal of Finance, not JFE. Miscrediting a foundational paper signals you do not know the literature. JFE's editorial structure is small and field-specialized — Editor-in-Chief Toni M. Whited (Michigan) with co-editors spanning corporate finance and asset pricing (Kellogg, Wharton, NYU Stern) — so your handling editor will likely be a frontier expert in exactly your subfield. Verify self-citation/anonymity rules on jfinec.com.

Build the positioning argument

1. Map the conversation, not the timeline

Group prior work into the 2–4 debates your paper enters (e.g., "the channel debate," "the measurement debate," "the identification debate"). Each strand gets a short synthesis, not a paper-by-paper recap.