Jfi Topic Selection

---
name: jfi-topic-selection
description: Use when working on Journal of Financial Intermediation manuscripts to test whether the paper is centrally about banking and financial intermediation — and whether to lead with theory or empirics — before investing in the draft.
---

# Topic Selection (jfi-topic-selection)

## When to trigger

- Deciding whether a project fits the Journal of Financial Intermediation (JFI) at all
- Choosing whether the paper's spine is a model (theory) or an empirical design

## The JFI fit bar

JFI is an Elsevier journal on **banking, financial intermediation, and the economics of financial
institutions and markets**, publishing **both theory and empirics**. The decisive question is: **is an
intermediary or financial-institution mechanism first-order?** Strong fits put banks, lenders, dealers,
insurers, or other intermediaries — and the frictions they resolve or create (information asymmetry,
monitoring, liquidity transformation, capital and regulation, relationship lending) — at the center.

A paper is **off-fit** if intermediation is incidental: a pure asset-pricing result, a corporate-finance
study where banks are just a control, or a macro paper with no institutional channel. Redirect those to a
general finance or field journal unless you can make the intermediation mechanism the load-bearing
contribution.

## Theory vs. empirics (decide early)

- **Theory-led:** the contribution is a model of intermediary behavior or a market friction. Plan around
  assumptions, propositions, and proof exposition (see jfi-identification-strategy) and a numerical example
  (see jfi-data-analysis).
- **Empirics-led:** the contribution is a credibly identified fact about banks/credit. Plan around a causal
  design and bank/loan-level data (see jfi-identification-strategy, jfi-data-analysis).

This choice shapes how almost every later skill is applied, so make it now.

## Anti-patterns

- Submitting an asset-pricing or corporate-finance paper where intermediation is decorative
- Leaving "theory or empirics?" unresolved, producing a paper that is thin on both
- Choosing JFI only because of fit with a sub-literature without a clear intermediary mechanism

## Output format

```
【Intermediation mechanism】<the first-order bank/intermediary channel>
【Fit verdict】strong / borderline / redirect-elsewhere
【Paper type】theory-led / empirics-led / both
【Next skill】jfi-literature-positioning
```