Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance: A bibliometric overview

Behavioral science has made a considerable contribution to finance. To gain an understanding of the scientific contributions emerging from all fields of finance with a behavioral perspective, this paper reviews the content of the major journal dedicated to behavioral finance, the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance (JBEF), since its foundation 8 years ago. For this purpose, we employ bibliometrics and content analysis to shed light on the publication trends and intellectual structure of the JBEF, obtaining numerous intriguing findings. First, the JBEF is still a young journal, and its numbers of publications and citations have grown significantly since its inception. Second, though there are contributions from all parts of the world, the United States is acknowledged as contributing the most to the JBEF. Diverse authors have contributed to the journal, but those affiliated with the University of Innsbruck and Macquarie University lead the list. Third, most of the studies have used the theoretical underpinnings of behavioral theory and prospect theory. Methodologically, most of the studies are empirical and primarily based on quantitative research designs, archival data and regression analysis. Fourth, the JBEF’s contributions concern eight intellectual clusters—namely personal characteristics and national cultures; psychological factors, financial literacy and robo-advising; investor sentiment and stock market volatility; asset market experiments; overconfidence and the disposition effects in the stock market; externalities (COVID-19) and financial markets; socially responsible investing; and herding behavior in financial markets. Finally, “behavioral finance” is the most prominently used author keyword in the JBEF’s publications, followed by “financial literacy” All in all, these findings should offer readers a retrospection of scholarly contributions from the JBEF.