Influential Articles, Journals, and Institutions in Risk Management and Insurance

ABSTRACT We use a threshold citation approach to measure the influence of articles, journals, and institutions in risk management and insurance research. The three frequently cited articles in risk management and insurance research are "Increasing Risk: I. A Definition" by Rothschild and Stiglitz (1970), "Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large" by Kimball (1990), and "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information" by Rothschild and Stiglitz (1990). Journal of Risk and Insurance, Econometrica, and Journal of Political Economy are the three influential journals in risk management and insurance research. Furthermore, the five influential institutions in risk management and insurance research are the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. INTRODUCTION Assessment of academic institutions, programs, and researchers always attracts attention from various constituents and popular media. Part of these assessment exercises is to measure the research performance of institutions, programs, and researchers. The outcomes are useful for various decisions such as personnel, student enrollment, and resource allocation. Our current study complements the literature of evaluating research output and influence in the risk management and insurance discipline using a threshold citation approach to assess the articles, journals, and institutions that are influential in the development of the theories and research applications within the discipline. There have been a number of studies to evaluate the influential articles, journals, institutions, and researchers in risk management and insurance by various methods. For instance, Outreville and Malouin (1985), Baur et al. (1996), and Ferguson et al. (2005) use survey results to rank influential risk management, insurance, and related journals. In two related studies, Colquitt (1997, 2003) analyzes the citation received by articles published in a set of insurance and actuarial journals. Cox and Gustavson (1990) and Colquitt et al. (1998) rank the risk management and insurance programs and researchers by the number of articles appearing in a set of insurance, risk management, and related journals. In the present study, we use a threshold citation approach to examine the influence of risk management and insurance articles, journals, and institutions. The threshold citation approach is similar to the methodology in Arnold et al. (2003) and is used to rank finance-related journals based on the number of important articles published by these journals. The "importance" is represented by the number of citations received for each article in the top six finance journals. Chan et al. (2008) and Hardin et al. (2006) apply the concept in Arnold et al. to finance and real estate disciplines by identifying the institutional affiliations of the frequently cited articles. Similar to Arnold et al., Chan et al., and Hardin et al., we identify influential articles in risk management and insurance research by searching for the frequently cited research works in the three leading risk management and insurance journals, Geneva Risk and Insurance Review (GRIR), Journal of Insurance Regulation (JIR), and Journal of Risk and Insurance (JRI) from 2000 to 2004. As long as a research work is cited at least four times in these leading risk management and insurance journals over a 5-year period, it will be included in the analyses, regardless of (1) whether or not the research work is published in a risk management and insurance or a noninsurance journal, and (2) whether or not the research work is a risk management and insurance-related or a noninsurance-related topic. Furthermore, the research works can be published in journals, conference proceedings, book chapters, or working papers, among others. This process will shed light on (1) which publication outlets or journals are influential in risk management and insurance research, (2) which particular research works or journal articles have the most impact on risk management and insurance research, and (3) which institutions have the most impact on the foundation of risk management and insurance research. …