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Background and ground rules for ECGI's Clinical Paper Competition

Background  
The Journal of Financial Economics regularly publishes “clinical papers” to shed light on specific corporate governance issues and institutions. These papers often help in deepening understanding of such issues, compared to formal statistical approaches, delivering answers or suggesting interpretations in instances where econometric analysis fails. They can also help in stimulating theoretical work, in particular when institutions matter and their operation is not well known.

Corporate governance cases in Europe are a fertile ground for this approach. Europe has a broad range of corporate governance institutions that vary within and across countries.
Yet very few “clinical papers” published in finance journals analyse this material. At the same time, the detailed workings of European corporations are still not well known, raising the danger of simplification and misinterpretation in international comparisons of corporate governance.
Definition of a clinical paper
The clinical paper method is set out in "Clinical papers and their role in the development of financial economics" by Michael C. Jensen, Eugene F. Fama, John B. Long, Jr. , Richard S. Ruback, G. William Schwert, Clifford W. Smith, Jr. and Jerold Warner, Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 24, Issue 1, September 1989, Pages 3-6. Click here to download a copy of this article. Examples of clinical papers can be found in past issues of the JFE, available from Elsevier
Geographical definition of European cases
The clinical papers must draw on cases/data from at least one Member State of the European Union, the New Member States of the Union, applicant countries, or another European country. For an exact definition of these, see the list of countries on the European Union website.
Eligibility of researchers
The competition is open to any researcher, whether working in Europe or elsewhere.
 
See also Administrative details and details of co-organisers and sponsor of the Competition