Author Conflicts of Interest

 The JFE is adopting the policies of the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies regarding author conflicts of interest.

  1. Every submitted manuscript must state each source of financial support for the particular research it describes. If none, that fact should be stated.

  2. Each author of a submitted manuscript should identify each interested party from whom he or she has received significant financial support, summing to at least $10,000 in the past three years or that will exceed this threshold under contracts in place at the time of submission. Support includes financial support (e.g., consulting fees, retainers, grants, research support, equity shares or stock options, and the like), and in-kind support (e.g., access to data). An interested party is any individual, group, organization, or business entity that has a stake (e.g., financial, political, regulatory, etc.) related to the manuscript.

  3. Each author should disclose any and all paid or unpaid positions as an officer, director, corporate advisor, or board member of relevant non-profit organizations or profitmaking entities. A “relevant” organization is one whose policy positions, goals, or financial interests relate to the manuscript.

  4. The disclosures required above apply to any close relative or partner of any author.

  5. Each author must disclose if another party had the right to review the manuscript prior to its circulation. Third-party review that must be disclosed includes review by supervisors and employers. If no third-party was required to review the manuscript, that fact must be disclosed.

  6. If any support provided to an author by an interested party is subject to any nondisclosure obligation, this fact must be disclosed to the JFE, along with the nature of the conflict.

  7. Any submitted manuscript reporting research that involved the collection of data on human subjects must disclose whether the author obtained approval for such data collection from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the authors’ home institutions. If IRB approval was not obtained, the authors must state the reason.

Each author must provide a conflict-of-interest disclosure statement. All disclosure statements should be gathered into one PDF document and uploaded separately with the submission. Resubmissions must also include a disclosure statement. The disclosure statement must be included even if the authors have nothing to disclose, and this fact should then be stated explicitly.

The JFE uses a double-blind refereeing system, so the Disclosure Statement should not be part of the manuscript, and it will not be available to referees.

For manuscripts accepted for publication, authors must sign Elsevier’s conflict of interest statement, which can be found at here.

Failure to disclose relevant information at the submission stage may result in termination of the review process or reversal of acceptance decisions.