Guide for Authors

(1) Papers must be in English.
(2) Papers to be submitted electronically to: http://www.ees.elsevier.com/pbfj/ accompanied by a submission fee of US$ 85.00. Payments should be done at http://ees.elsevier.com/pbfj/img/PBFJsubmissionfee.htm. There are no page charges. Submission of a paper will be held to imply that it contains original unpublished work and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. The Editor does not accept responsibility for damage or loss of papers submitted. Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to sign a .Journal Publishing Agreement..(for more information on this and copyright see http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. An e-mail (or letter) will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a .Journal Publishing Agreement. form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
(3) Please adhere strictly to the general instructions below on style, arrangement and,in particular, the reference style of the journal.Ensure that the letter .l. and digit .1., and also the letter .O. and digit .0. are usedproperly, and format your article (tabs, indents, etc.) consistently. Characters notavailable on your word processor (Greek letters, mathematical symbols, etc.) shouldnot be left open but indicated by a unique code (e.g. gralpha, alpha, etc., for the Greekletter ). Such codes should be used consistently throughout the entire text; a list ofcodes used should accompany the electronic manuscript. Do not allow your wordprocessor to introduce word breaks and do not use a justified layout.
(4) Manuscripts should be prepared with all lines of text throughout the manuscriptnumbered continuously from page to page, with wide margins and double spacingthroughout, i.e. also for abstracts, footnotes and references. Every page of themanuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc. should be numbered.Titles and subtitles should be short.
(5) The first page of the manuscript should contain the following information:

(i) the title;

(ii) the name(s) and institutional affiliation(s) of the author(s); (iii) an abstract ofnot more than 100 words. A footnote on the same sheet should give the name,address, and telephone and fax numbers of the corresponding author [as well as an emailaddress].
(6) The first page of the manuscript should also contain at least one standard JEL code ( http://www.aeaweb.org/journal/jel_class_system.html); in addition, up to five keywords should be supplied.

(7) Acknowledgements and information on grants received can be given in a firstfootnote, which should not be included in the consecutive numbering of footnotes.
(8) Footnotes should be kept to a minimum and numbered consecutively throughoutthe text with superscript Arabic numerals. They should be double spaced and not include displayed formulae or tables.
(9) Displayed formulae should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript as (1), (2), etc. against the right-hand margin of the page. In cases where the derivation of formulae has been abbreviated, it is of great help to the referees if the full derivation can be presented on a separate sheet (not to be published).
(10) References to publications should be as follows: .Smith (1992) reported that .... or .This problem has been studied previously (e.g., Smith et al., 1969). The author should make sure that there is a strict one-to-one correspondence between the names and years in the text and those on the list. The list of references should appear at the end of the main text (after any appendices, but before tables and legends for figures). It should be double spaced and listed in alphabetical order by author's name.

References should appear as follows:

For periodicals
Griffiths, W., Judge, G., 1992. Testing and estimating location vectors when the error covariance matrix is unknown, Journal of Econometrics 54, 121.138. (Note that journal titles should not be abbreviated.)

For monographs
Hawawini, G.., Swary, I., 1990. Mergers and Acquisitions in the U.S. Banking Industry: Evidence from the Capital Markets. North-Holland, Amsterdam.

For contributions to collective works
Brunner, K., Meltzer, A.H., 1990. Money supply, in: Friedman B.M., Hahn, F.H. (Eds.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, Vol. 1. North-Holland, Amsterdam. pp. 357.396.

(11) Illustrations will be reproduced photographically from originals supplied by the author; they will not be redrawn by the publisher. Care should be taken that lettering and symbols are of a comparable size. The illustrations should not be inserted in the text, and should be marked with figure number, title of paper, and author's name. All graphs and diagrams should be referred to as figures, and should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals.
(12) Tables should be numbered consecutively in the text in Arabic numerals. Any manuscript which does not conform to the above instructions may be returned for the necessary revision before publication.
(13) One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post). Elsevier now sends PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs. The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win. If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.
(14) The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.