| name | jfi-writing-style |
| description | Use when revising a Journal of Financial Intermediation (JFI) manuscript for the journal's house conventions — numbered sections, author–date Elsevier referencing, a concise stand-alone abstract, specialist intermediation vocabulary, and prose that explains the mechanism before the specifications. It edits for style; it does not invent content. |
Writing Style (jfi-writing-style)
When to trigger
- Polishing a JFI draft before submission or revision
- Aligning references, sections, and abstract with JFI/Elsevier conventions
JFI house conventions (verified 2026-06-20; re-confirm on the official page)
- Numbered sections (1, 1.1, 1.1.1) structure the manuscript.
- References: "your-paper-your-way" at submission — any internally consistent style is accepted;
the journal applies an author–date (name–year) Elsevier style at proof. In-text citations give
surname(s) and year, with "et al." for three or more authors; the list is alphabetical then
chronological, with a/b/c disambiguation for same-author/same-year items. Keep author–year fields clean.
- Abstract: concise, factual, and able to stand alone, with references avoided; keep it at 250 words
or fewer.
- Keywords: provide 1-7 English keywords for indexing.
- Optional Highlights: 3–5 bullets, max 85 characters each, strongly encouraged.
- Generative-AI disclosure: if AI writing tools were used, declare them in a dedicated section
before the References (see jfi-submission).
Make the mechanism land
JFI is read by intermediation specialists who reward a clearly motivated economic mechanism:
- Explain the intermediary friction and channel before the econometric specification or the formal
model — the reader should know why before how.
- Tie every result back to the intermediation contribution (see jfi-contribution-framing); avoid
coefficient-by-coefficient narration with no economic interpretation.
- Define institutional terms on first use; precision about banks, loans, and regulation signals fluency.
Mechanism-first rewrite, worked (illustrative)
- Before: "We regress loan growth on the capital shortfall interacted with bank size, controlling for
firm fixed effects. The coefficient is −2.1 and significant at the 1% level."
- After: "Banks that must rebuild capital face a choice between costly equity and shrinking assets.
If lending relationships embody information rivals cannot replicate, constrained banks can cut
relationship credit without losing the borrower — so recapitalization's burden falls on locked-in
firms. Consistent with this, a 1pp shortfall reduces credit to the same firm by 2.1pp, and twice that
for single-bank borrowers."
- The rewrite names friction → channel → prediction before the number, which is how this journal's
specialist readership parses a result; the regression mechanics move to the design section.
An intermediation lexicon check
Loose vocabulary signals a non-specialist to a single-blind referee who knows your name:
- liquidity creation (the Diamond–Dybvig transformation function) vs. liquidity provision
(supplying funds) — not interchangeable;
- capital requirement (the rule) vs. capital ratio (the outcome) vs. capital shock (the
change you exploit);
- say credit supply only after demand is absorbed — until then it is "lending growth";
- relationship lending implies repeated interaction and private information, not merely an existing
loan;
- a run is strategic withdrawal, not any deposit outflow;
- shadow bank denotes intermediation outside the regulated perimeter, not any nonbank financial firm.
Style pushbacks at this venue, and fixes
- "The introduction is a results list" → restructure as friction, mechanism, design, finding, lesson.
- "Notation drifts between model and empirics" → one symbol table; the model's friction parameter should
be the object the regression coefficient estimates or proxies.
- "Reads like a policy report" → replace recommendation language with the equilibrium or identified
margin the analysis actually delivers.
- "The abstract could describe ten papers" → one abstract sentence each for friction, design or model,
headline magnitude or proposition, and the intermediation lesson; cut everything else.
Anti-patterns
- A numbered/footnote citation style left in at submission with no internal consistency
- An abstract stuffed with references or with no stated finding
- Specifications introduced before the mechanism is explained
- Forgetting the AI-disclosure section when such tools were used
Output format
【Sections】numbered (1, 1.1)? [Y/N]
【References】internally consistent, author–year-ready? [Y/N]
【Abstract】concise, stand-alone, no refs, <=250 words? [Y/N]
【Mechanism-first】explained before specs? [Y/N]
【AI disclosure】present-if-used? [Y/N]
【Next skill】jfi-replication-and-data-policy
