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:

1. A finance question with institutional content: banks, lenders, funds, markets, regulation, disclosure, risk-taking, liquidity, credit supply, or capital allocation.
2. A credible design or model: empirical identification, careful data construction, or a theoretical mechanism with testable implications.
3. External relevance: implications for financial institutions, investors, regulators, or corporate financing decisions.
4. 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

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

1. Which intermediation friction sits at the center: capital, liquidity, information, competition, or regulation?
2. Would a bank supervisor, risk officer, or lender change a decision given the result?
3. Does the design produce a magnitude in finance units (basis points, percentage points of assets) a referee can benchmark?
4. 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