Journal of Applied Corporate Finance

Published on behalf of Morgan Stanley

Edited by:
Donald H. Chew Jr.

Print ISSN: 1078-1196
Online ISSN: 1745-6622
Frequency: Quarterly
Current Volume: 22 / 2010

TopAuthor Guidelines

The Journal of Applied Corporate Finance

A Morgan Stanley Publication

Edited by: Donald H. Chew, Jr.

Print ISSN: 1078-1196

Online ISSN: 1745-6622

Frequency: Quarterly

Current Volume: 17

Author Guidelines

All papers should be submitted electronically to the editor at don.chew@morganstanley.com.

The following style instructions apply to manuscripts submitted for publication in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance.

1) Manuscripts should be in Microsoft Word, double-spaced, 12-point font.

2) The cover page contains the title of the manuscript and an abstract of 150-200 words, along with the names of the authors, their affiliations, and any other pertinent identifying information.

3) The introductory section has no heading. Subsequent headers are in the following form:

Section Headers (Left-justified, 14-pt., title case, bold, small caps)

Subheaders (Left-justified, title case, bold)

Subsubheads. (Indented, title case, text follows on same line)

4) Tables are numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Please check that the text contains a reference to each table. Indicate in the text approximately where each table should be placed. Type each table on a separate page at the end of the paper.

5) Figures are numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Final figures for accepted papers must be submitted in native electronic format and all legends must be clearly legible.

6) Equations: All but very short mathematical expressions should be displayed on a separate line and centered. Equations are numbered consecutively in the right margin, using Arabic numerals in parentheses. Please avoid Greek letters.

7) Points that are important but perhaps technical or picky (but which anticipate and address questions that the more alert reader might raise or which provide additional details that a more senior corporate executive might not want to wade through) should go in footnotes. There should be a balance between academic rigor and holding the reader's interest - words like "leptokurtic" send many readers into a tailspin and generally belong in the footnotes (if they're even necessary at all).

8) Actions/events that took place in the past are expressed in the past tense (e.g., "We examined the data and found…" or "Our tests showed…"), in contrast to most academic writing.

9) The author(s) must be willing to sign an appropriate permission or assignment form giving Morgan Stanley print and electronic publication rights. Please inquire for forms.

10) Citations go in footnotes (no author-date in-text citations as in academic articles). Names of authors of cited research do not generally appear in the text; instead, substitute "Previous research has shown…" or "Researchers have found…" unless the author is fairly well known or is referred to later in the text. First initials are okay for authors in citation details. Page numbers are required for direct quotes, but are not necessary otherwise.

Journal article: Author, "Article Title," Journal, Vol. # (Year), pp. 00.

Michael Jensen, "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, Vol. 76 (1986).

Merton Miller, "The History of Finance: An Eyewitness Account," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 8-14.

Article in book: Author, "Article Title," in Author, Ed., Book Title (City: Publisher, Year).

John Freear, Jeffrey Sohl, and William Wetzel, Jr., "The Informal Venture Capital Market: Milestones Passed and the Road Ahead," in Donald Sexton and Raymond Smilor, Eds., Entrepreneurship 2000 (Chicago: Upstart Publishing Company, 2000).

Article in periodical: Publication Name, date of publication, page number OR article title. The author is not cited.

Wall Street Journal, Mar. 16, 1995, p. A3.

Wall Street Journal, Mar. 16, 1995, "Article Title."

Book: Author, Book Title (City: Publisher, Year).

Paul MacAvoy, The Natural Gas Market: Sixty Years of Regulation and Deregulation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).

Working paper: Author, "Article Title," Working paper, University (include city/state/country in parentheses if necessary to identify institution), year (in parens).

Laura Bottazzi, Marco Da Rin, and Thomas Hellmann, "The Changing Face of the European Venture Capital Industry: Facts and Figures," Working paper, Bocconi University and Stanford University (2003).

Web site: Energy Information Association, "Energy Price Impacts on the U.S. Economy," http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/economy/energy_price.html, July 18, 2002.

Once citation details have been provided for a particular source, use the author-date format in subsequent footnotes, e.g., "Jensen (1986), cited earlier."

If there are lots of citations, however, it makes sense to use the traditional author-date format in the text - as in "Jensen (1986) found that" or "(see Jensen, 1986; Miller, 2000)" - and the format for the reference list at the end of the article changes slightly to show the date immediately after the authors, as follows:

Journal article:

Harris, Milton and Artur Raviv, 1988, "Corporate Governance: Voting Rights and Majority Rules," Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 20, pp. 203-235.

Article in book:

Moel, A. and P. Tufano, 2000, "Bidding for the Antamina Mine," in M. Brennan and L. Trigeorgis, Eds., Project Flexibility, Agency, and Competition (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Book:

MacAvoy, Paul, 2000, The Natural Gas Market: Sixty Years of Regulation and Deregulation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

Working paper:

Lambrecht, B. and W. Perraudin, 1999, "Real Options and Preemption under Incomplete Information," Working paper, University of Cambridge.