Finance Research Letters aims to be the only letters journal for all areas of finance. Specializing in peer-reviewed letters published on an accelerated timetable, Finance Research Letters offers an exciting publication outlet for novel and frontier finance. The journal's high standards and wide dissemination ensure a broad readership among the finance and economics communities.

Finance Research Letters encourages submissions of new research in all finance fields, from asset pricing, investments, risk management, regulation, and insurance to corporate finance, financial intermediation, financial econometrics, financial forecasting, and financial engineering. It excludes fields widely considered to be part of economics, such as macro- and microeconomics, economic theory, economic history, and industrial organization.

Submission of Manuscripts

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online at http://www.ees.elsevier.com/frl. This site will guide authors stepwise through the submission process. Authors should upload the source files of their articles in the preferred format of Microsoft (MS) Word, RTF, WordPerfect, or LaTeX for text and TIFF or EPS for figures. If you submit a word processing file, the system generates an Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which is used for the reviewing process. Authors, reviewers, and editors send and receive all correspondence by e-mail and no paper correspondence is necessary. Should you be unable to provide an electronic version, please contact the Editorial Office prior to submission at: Finance Research Letters 525 B Street, Suite 1900 San Diego, CA 92101-4495, USA E-mail: FRL@elsevier.com Telephone: (619) 699-6312

There is submission fee of USD $65.00, which is payable by Visa or MasterCard. The submission fees are used to support editorial expenses of the journal. Please submit here to pay the submission fee online at the time of the submission.

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

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/authorsrights). 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.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use by authors in these cases: contact Elsevier's Rights Department, Oxford, UK: phone (+44) 1865 843830, fax (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail permissions@elsevier.com. Requests may also be completed online via the Elsevier homepage ( http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissions).

Preparation of Manuscripts

Language polishing

Articles must be written in good English. Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission may visit http://www.elsevier.com/locate/languagepolishing or contact authorsupport@elsevier.com for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods, or services offered by outside vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms and Conditions at http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions.

Manuscripts prepared using TeX or LaTeX are welcome; however, LaTeX is strongly preferred. The Elsevier LaTeX package (including detailed instructions for LaTeX preparation) is available at http://www.elsevier.com/latex. Note that the use of other specified versions of TeX or extensive use of custom macros might necessitate conventional typesetting from the hard-copy manuscript, which will delay the production time involved. The manuscript will be edited according to the style of the journal, and authors must read the proofs carefully.

Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout. The number of pages should not exceed 15 printed pages, which includes diagrams, figures, and tables. Papers should be numbered consecutively and organized as follows:

The title page (p. 1) should contain the article title, authors' names and complete affiliations, footnotes to the title, and the address for manuscript correspondence (including e-mail address and telephone and fax numbers).

The abstract (p. 2) must be a single paragraph that summarizes the main findings of the paper in less than 100 words. Use the abstract format required by the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) (http://www.aeaweb.org/journal/elclasjn.html). After the abstract, include a list of up to 10 keywords that will be useful for indexing or searching and at least 4 JEL classification numbers.

References should be cited in the text by the author's surname and date of publication. The text citations can be given in the form "As Cummins (1988) showed..." or "As already shown (Cummins, 1988; Shah and Thakor, 1987)...." Where there are more than two authors, use the first author's surname followed by et al.: "In Laffont et al. (1987) it was ...." List references in alphabetical order. Type the references double-spaced throughout. Only articles that have been published or are in press should be included in the references. Unpublished results or personal communications should be cited as such in the text. Journal names are spelled out in full. Please note the following examples:

Kamien, M., Schwartz, N., 1981. Dynamic Optimization. North Holland, New York.

Laffont, J.-J., Maskin, E., Rochet, J.-C., 1987. Optimal nonlinear pricing with two dimensional characteristics In: Groves, T., Radner, R., Reiter, S. (Eds.), Information, Incentives, and Economics Mechanisms. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 256-266.

Miller, D.P., Puthenpurackall, J.J., 2002. The cost, wealth effects, and determinants of international capital raising: evidence from public Yankee bonds. Journal of Financial Intermediation 11, 455-485.

For unpublished lectures or symposia, include the title of the paper, name of the sponsoring society in full, location, and date. Working paper and manuscript styles are noted below.

Lo, A., 1999. The equity premium puzzle. Department of Finance Working Paper No: 1999-10, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Lo, A., 1999. The equity premium puzzle. Manuscript, Department of Finance, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Figures should be submitted in EPS or TIFF format once a paper is accepted. Color or grayscale photographs (halftones) should always use a minimum of 300 dpi. For bitmapped line drawings, use a minimum of 1000 dpi. Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale), a minimum of 500 dpi is required. Please visit our Web site at http://authors.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions for detailed instructions on preparing electronic artwork.

Color Figures. Illustrations in color in the printed issue can be accepted only if the author defrays the cost. If, together with your accepted article, however, you submit usable color figures, then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version. For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork, visit http://authors.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Please note: Because of technical complications that can arise in converting color figures to "gray scale" (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print), please submit in addition usable black-and-white files corresponding to all the color illustrations.

Tables should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in order of appearance in the text. Type each table double-spaced on a separate page with a short descriptive title typed directly above and with essential footnotes below.

Equations should be typewritten and the numbers for displayed equations should be placed in parentheses at the right margin. References to equations should use the form "Eq. (3)" or simply "(3)."

Preparation of Supplementary Material

Elsevier accepts supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data is provided in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction pages at http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.

Proofs

One set of page proofs in PDF format will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author . 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.

Electronic offprints (e-offprints)

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.

For any further information please contact the Author Support Department at authorsupport@elsevier.com.