Penn Professors on Writing in Finance

Dr. Franklin Allen



About the Professor

Dr. Allen is the Nippon Life Professor of Finance and a professor of Economics. His current research interests include corporate finance, asset pricing, and economics of information.

More information can be found at: Dr. Allen's webpage






Writing Process

  1. Start by observing a real-world phenomenon in the financial markets
  2. Conduct background research to see if anyone has come up with a theory to explain this
  3. Formulate a hypothesis to explain this occurrence
  4. Find other researchers who are interested in the same field
    • Colleagues at university
    • People who have done research like it in the past
    • Friends in field
  5. Decide whether to choose theoretical or empirical tract to justify or explain theory, respectively
    • Is enough relevant data available?
    • Is this a brand new theory?
  6. Dr. Allen does all of his writing at his desk in his office at Steinberg Dietrich Hall
    • Timeframe of writing depends on deadline
    • As few as several days for an explanatory survey. A book can take years to write
  7. Most articles written by collaborating teams
    • Extensive “back and forth” style debates and self-review
    • Drafts are written and rewritten numerous times (can easily exceed 5 drafts, especially when debating the validity of mathematical equations)
    • Sent out not only to research team, but also to friends in the field
  8. Peer Review
    • Small meetings among peers, at conferences and seminars
    • Scholarly article review by journals
    • Each cycle requires typically between 1 and 6 months
    • Articles may need to be submitted 3-4 times depending on editor feedback
    • High rejection rate (especially in behavior finance as the field is new and viewed skeptically)

Genres of Writing

There are two types of writing that Dr. Allen typically does:

  1. Surveys
    • Definition: general summaries of the field’s past research
    • Structure: Introduction that gives explanatory proposition and outline of piece’s content followed by summary of research, which concludes with a restatement of the proposition and the main points of the past research before suggesting new research directions.
    • Purpose: To condense a large amount of similar information to highlight relationships among past pieces of work and to show where additional research is required

  2. Scholarly Articles
    • Definition: explanatory or justificatory works showcasing an author’s research submitted to financial journals
    • Structure (IMRD): abstract and introduction, method/model, results/predictions of model, discussion of findings and suggestions for new research directions, appendices (for proofs, assumptions, models/diagrams, data sets, definitions of variables)

Examples of Professional Writing

Credit Market Competition and Capital Regulation

Interbank Market Liquidity and Central Bank Intervention



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