Citations and the readers’ information-extracting costs of finance articles
Marc Berninger,
Florian Kiesel,
Dirk Schiereck and
Eduard Gaar
Journal of Banking & Finance, 2021, vol. 131, issue C
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the relationship between the reader's information-extracting costs of finance articles and the article's number of citations. The reader's information-extracting costs are measured using three metrics: (i) the Flesch-Kincaid readability score, (ii) the article's length, and (iii) the number of complex words. Based on a sample of more than 14,000 full text articles published between 2000 and 2016 in 16 finance journals, we show that the information-extracting costs of finance journals have significantly increased over time, while the topics of these articles, determined by machine-learning topic modeling, remained relatively constant. We find a positive correlation between the reader's information-extracting costs and the number of citations achieved by a paper for articles that are published in the top-three finance journals (JF, JFE, RFS), but do not observe this pattern for articles published in other major finance journals.
Keywords: Information extracting costs; Readability; Textual analysis; Finance literature; Machine learning, Scientometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 G00 G10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:131:y:2021:i:c:s0378426621001473
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2021.106188
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