Frontiers and Foundations: Insights From the Most‐Cited Finance Papers, 2021–2026
分析了2021至2026年五大金融顶刊的100篇高被引论文，发现ESG和气候金融主导引用，但最热论文是批评交错双重差分法的文章；机器学习主要用于测量难以观测的变量，而非独立研究议程。
ABSTRACT We examine the 100 most‐cited papers published in JF, JFE, RFS, JFQA, and RoF from January 2021 through May 2026 to take stock of recent finance research. ESG and climate finance dominate the citation record, but the single most‐cited paper is a critique of staggered difference‐in‐differences. Finance has moved into new topics, and methods papers have raised the standards for applied empirical work. Machine learning and natural language processing have entered the field mostly as tools for measuring things that used to be hard to observe, not as research agendas in their own right. We close on five areas where the next round of work is likely to concentrate: carbon pricing, ESG additionality, retail investor welfare, spatial finance, and AI‐driven information production.