brycewang-stanford Literature Positioning (jfi-literature-positioning)
When to trigger
- Writing or revising the introduction and related-work section for a JFI paper
- A referee said the contribution relative to existing intermediation work is unclear
The JFI positioning bar
JFI readers are banking and financial-intermediation specialists. Position the paper against the intermediation frontier — relationship lending and monitoring, liquidity transformation and runs, bank capital and regulation, credit supply and the lending channel, information asymmetry and screening, financial-contracting and security design — not against generic finance. Name the two to four closest papers and state the specific mechanism or margin you add, change, or overturn.
Distinguish your work from neighboring fields that JFI brushes against: pure asset pricing, pure corporate finance where banks are incidental, and macro-finance with no institutional channel. If your closest comparisons are all outside intermediation, that is a signal to recheck fit (see jfi-topic-selection).
How to position
- For empirics: "Closest is X (which shows A using design D); we differ by identifying mechanism M with a new bank/loan-level design and data, isolating the intermediary channel X cannot."
- For theory: "Model Y delivers result R under assumption A; we relax A (or add friction F) and obtain a different equilibrium prediction, generating a testable implication."
- Keep it a positioning argument, not a survey: every cite earns its place by sharpening the contrast.
Anchor literatures a JFI referee expects you to command
| Your mechanism | Canonical anchors to position against |
|---|---|
| Runs, liquidity transformation | Diamond–Dybvig; Calomiris–Kahn; Goldstein–Pauzner |
| Delegated monitoring / screening | Diamond (1984); Holmström–Tirole (1997) |
| Relationship lending | Petersen–Rajan; Boot's JFI survey; Berger–Udell |
| Credit-supply identification | Khwaja–Mian within-firm designs and their register successors |
| Deposits and franchise value | The Drechsler–Savov–Schnabl deposits-channel line |
| Securitization / security design | Gorton–Pennacchi |
| Banking-theory synthesis | Bhattacharya–Thakor's JFI survey |
Anchors establish fluency; the working-paper frontier on top of them establishes that you know where the intermediation conversation currently sits. Both layers belong in the introduction.
Positioning against JFI's neighbors
- Journal of Banking and Finance: broader empirical-banking scope. If your contrast set is "papers that document banking facts," sharpen it to "papers that test an intermediation mechanism" — or you are positioning for the wrong outlet.
- JF / JFE / RFS general-finance papers: cite them for stakes, but the two-to-four closest papers should sit inside the intermediation literature itself.
- Macro-banking (JME-style): keep the institutional channel, not the aggregate, as your delta.
A worked positioning move (illustrative)
"Khwaja and Mian identify the lending channel from liquidity shocks; subsequent credit-register studies trace its crisis transmission. We differ on the mechanism margin: our data let us show the cut concentrates where the bank's information monopoly is strongest — which delegated-monitoring models predict and pure balance-sheet models do not." Three sentences: closest papers, design delta, theory separation. That is a complete JFI positioning paragraph; everything else is supporting cast.
As a calibration (reading-based, hedged): related-work discussion in accepted JFI papers tends to be woven into the introduction rather than parked in a long standalone section — two to three paragraphs of contrast, with the survey-style material, if any, moved to a footnote or an appendix. Theory papers add one paragraph locating the friction within banking theory (e.g., relative to the Bhattacharya–Thakor or Diamond lineages) so the referee can see which modeling tradition is being extended.
Anti-patterns
- A literature dump with no mechanism contrast
- Citing only general-finance landmarks while ignoring the intermediation sub-literature a JFI referee owns
- Claiming novelty without naming the closest paper you improve upon
- Positioning against a field journal's question rather than an intermediation mechanism
Output format
【Closest papers】2–4, each with its result + method
【Your delta】the mechanism/margin you add or overturn
【Field boundary】why this is intermediation, not adjacent finance
【Next skill】jfi-identification-strategy