Emerging trends in Asia-Pacific finance research: A review of recent influential publications and a research agenda

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of 73 influential publications among 667 journal articles published in the in the Asia-Pacific finance literature from 2011 to 2015. We map how the top 73 publications are related in terms of their citation relationships and identify eight different research fields, or lines of enquiry: (1) Corporate Finance, (2) Asset Pricing, (3) Conditional Asset Pricing, (4) Research on Anomalies, (5) Market Microstructure Research, (6) Factor Models, as well as two novel research streams, (7) Research Process and (8) Research on Frontiers in Finance. Focusing on the research frontiers in finance, our paper identifies emerging research trends and pathways for future research in the following areas: (1) Environmental Finance, (2) Modern Markets, (3) Behavioural Finance, (4) Qualitative Methods, and (5) Equity and Diversity. We highlight possible pathways for researchers to build on existing knowledge and pursue opportunities for innovative and exciting new research contributing to an expansion of the research frontiers.