The SSRN Blog

We count the number of times a paper has been downloaded and rank them within different categories. These rankings include the Top Ten downloaded papers for All Time and for papers distributed in a SSRN email journal in the previous 60 days for each category. Top Ten Lists are available for all SSRN abstracting journals and for each of its subject networks on the Browse by Journal List. To view a Top Ten List, expand a network and click on the Top button.

The “Weekly Top 5 Papers” that are posted on SSRNblog each week are the overall top 5 downloaded papers for that given week.

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting & Preserving Scholarship

Stacy Righini (SSRN’s Social Media Specialist) will be attending Utah State University’s Regional Institutional Repository Conference: Disseminating, Promoting, & Preserving Scholarship.  The conference is sponsored by Utah State University, Berkeley Electronic Press, and the Utah Academic Library Consortium.  The conference will be on the Logan campus of Utah State University on September 30, 2009.

Stacy will be presenting an electronic poster “Institutional Repositories & Discipline Repositories: The IR Horizon.” Her poster will be available for viewing at the conference:

8:30 AM - 4:30 PM Merrill-Cazier Library Room 101
Institutional Repositories & Discipline Repositories Eposter, Stacy Righini, Social Science Research Network

The EPoster will also be available for viewing at this blog the day of the conference.

Description:
Institutional Repositories (IRs) have played an important role in promoting and expanding the pathways to scholarly content. Most IRs reside in universities providing valuable services to faculty, researchers, and administrators who want to archive research, historic, and creative materials.

The increasing awareness that universities and research institutions were losing valuable digital and print materials began driving the establishment of IRs and provided the changes in scholarly communication needed to remove the barriers to access. The primary purpose of the early IRs was to aggregate and preserve the intellectual output of a laboratory, department, or university. The incentives and commitments to change the process of scholarly communication have also begun serving as strong motivators for continuing and expanding the building of them. Presently there is a “bandwagon” approach to mandating submissions to “your school’s” IR. For universities, repositories are marketing tools communicating capabilities and quality by showcasing faculty and student research, public service projects, and other important activities and collections.

However, there are real limitations. Funding, especially in the current economic climate, poses a serious challenge. There are small aggregate amounts of submitted content overall and it is sparse in many areas. In addition, there is a general lack of knowledge amongst many scholars as to why an IR is valuable. Scholarly societies have been establishing discipline-based repositories to preserve the history and literature of a particular subject area and address some of these limitations. In the future, we see IRs partnering with disciplinary repositories (DRs) by playing a key role in providing a bountiful location harvest.

********

Stacy will be “live blogging” during the conference, follow her tweets: http://twitter.com/srighini She will be using the hashtag #IRUSU, unless another tag is given the day of the conference - in that case she will let all her followers know and post it in the blog.

Additionally, Stacy will be available throughout the conference to speak with individuals regarding SSRN and its services. If you would like to set up a meeting, please email Stacy_Righini@ssrn.com

Stacy is looking forward to the conference and meeting everyone there!

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending September 25, 2009:

1. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

2. Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization
by Paul Ohm (University of Colorado Law School)

3. A Quantitative Approach to Faber’s Tactical Asset Allocation
by Stefano Marmi (Scuola Normale Superiore) and Claudio Pacati (University of Siena - Department of Economics) and Wiston Adrián Risso (University of Siena - Department of Economics) and Roberto Renò (University of Siena - Department of Economics)

4. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

5. Governance Matters VIII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996-2008
by Daniel Kaufmann (Brookings Institution) and Aart Kraay (World Bank - Development Research Group) and Massimo Mastruzzi (World Bank Institute)

Our abstracting eJournals contain abstracts and links to full text papers in a given topic and are delivered right to your inbox! Our sponsored eJournals and Research Paper Series are free to all users. Many Universities and Institutions have site subscriptions. Users that are properly affiliated with those Universities and Institutions can subscribe without cost to eJournals in certain networks. Our users may also request a 60 day trial to any of our networks.

To subscribe, you will need to be logged into your User Account at http://hq.ssrn.com/

Please view the video demonstration above for complete and specific instructions. If you still need help, please feel free to contact AuthorSupport@SSRN.com, 585.442.8170, or toll free 877-SSRNHELP (877.777.6435).

For answers to other FAQs, please visit SSRN’s FAQ: http://ssrn.com/update/general/ssrn_faq.html

And don’t forget to submit your questions to Blog@ssrn.com for “FAQ Tuesdays”.

Here are the latest announcements from SSRN:

University of Virginia School of Law Rejoins LSN Law & Economics RPS and Public Law & Legal Theory RPS

We are pleased to announce the University of Virginia School of Law is reinstating its Law & Economics Research Paper Series and Public Law & Legal Theory Research Paper Series within the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN).

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW, LAW & ECONOMICS RESEARCH PAPER SERIES

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/U-Virginia-LEC.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=U-Virginia-LEC
Editor: Richard M. Hynes, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of
Law

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW, PUBLIC LAW & LEGAL THEORY RESEARCH PAPER SERIES

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/U-Virginia-PUB.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=U-Virginia-PUB
Editor: M. Elizabeth Magill, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of
Law

Founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants. Virginia’s Law & Economics Research Paper Series and Public Law & Legal Theory Research Paper Series feature the interdisciplinary scholarship of the School of Law’s faculty and are accessible on-line and through e-mail distribution. (View full announcement)

Frontiers in Finance & Economics Joins FEN Partners in Publishing

We are pleased to announce Frontiers in Finance & Economics has joined our Partners in Publishing within the Financial Economics Network (FEN).

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Frontiers-Finance-Economics.html
Subscribe: http://ow.ly/qjfM

Frontiers in Finance & Economics is a refereed journal that publishes original, empirical, theoretical, and methodological articles.

It aims at developing the knowledge and practice of finance and economics, fostering top research in these areas and sharing ideas among scholars and practitioners.

Research contributions include, but are not limited to, topics on: financial markets and institutions, securities pricing, financial engineering, emerging markets, international capital flows, country/political risk, foreign direct and portfolio investment, corporate governance, credit risk, monetary policy and investment theory, financial liberalization and innovation, sovereign debt issues, international trade, structural policies and economic adjustment, open economics issues, economic and financial globalization and integration, crisis and contagion effects, sustainable development, country and comparative studies, economic history, development, political economy, prospective studies and transition economies and their problems. (View full announcement)

Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Quarterly Review Joins ERN Research Paper Series

We are pleased to announce that the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Quarterly Review has started a Research Paper Series within the Economics Research Network (ERN).

Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Quarterly Review

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/BIS-Quarterly-Review.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=BIS-Quarterly-Review

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Quarterly Review disseminates the Bank for International Settlement’s research on financial markets and macroeconomics. Articles tend to be more topical than academic papers, are less technical and focus on topics that are of interest to central banks. The overview chapter analyses recent developments; another chapter reviews the highlights of the recent releases of the BIS’ statistics on banking, securities and derivatives markets. Recent special features have focused on measures to reopen securitisation markets, on methods to estimate the contributions to systemic risk of individual banks, on the cost of capital of banks and on setting up central counterparties in OTC derivatives markets. The annex to the Quarterly Review includes data from the international financial statistics on financial institutions operating across borders; various financial markets in different jurisdictions; a growing range of financial instruments; and lenders, depositors, investors and borrowers transacting in different currencies. (View full announcement)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending September 18, 2009:

1. Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization
by Paul Ohm (University of Colorado Law School)

2. The Equity Premium in 150 Textbooks
by Pablo Fernandez (University of Navarra - IESE Business School)

3. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

4. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

5. Governance Matters VIII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996-2008
by Daniel Kaufmann (Brookings Institution) and Aart Kraay (World Bank - Development Research Group) and Massimo Mastruzzi (World Bank Institute)

As many of you know, we have worked closely with The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to create our Entrepreneurship Research & Policy Network (ERPN). Earlier this year, they held the first Economics Bloggers Forum and I was fortunate to be able to participate.  It was a wonderful event and a great opportunity to meet and learn from some very intelligent people, a few of which are included in the Renewal of Entrepreneurial Capitalism video below.  Other than my friends at the Kauffman Foundation inserting the wrong blog URL for me, I was very impressed with the quality of the videos and the professionalism of the staff.

Overview - Economic Bloggers and the Renewal of Entrepreneurial Capitalism

Gregg Gordon - Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Network

Gregg Gordon - Building the Field of Entrepreneurship Research

Please let me know what you think about the videos and what changes are occurring in your discipline.

We would like to begin addressing many of SSRN’s users’ Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs) via our blog. Each Tuesday, we will be addressing a new question. Please feel free to submit your questions via the “comments” below any posts, or email questions to Blog@ssrn.com.

The FAQ for this week is: How can I have my own paper included in the SSRN eLibrary?

We invite you to submit abstracts from your own papers for inclusion in our eLibrary.

You will need the following information:

• Abstract
• Names, contact information, and affiliations for all co-authors not in the SSRN database
• Journal citation (for accepted and forthcoming papers)
• Permission from copyright holder, if not yourself
• The email and postal addresses, phone and fax numbers, and the affiliation of the contact author
• Electronic version of the paper in PDF format (you can create a PDF by downloading a free utility during the submission process or by visiting the Adobe website).
• You will need to be logged into your User Account at http://hq.ssrn.com/

Please view the video demonstration above for complete and specific instructions. If you still need help, please feel free to contact AuthorSupport@SSRN.com, 585.442.8170, or toll free 877-SSRNHELP (877.777.6435). To submit is free, and we encourage all authors to submit their research.

For answers to other FAQs, please visit SSRN’s FAQ: http://ssrn.com/update/general/ssrn_faq.html

And don’t forget to start submitting your questions for “FAQ Tuesdays”.

Here is the latest announcement from SSRN:

Darden School of Business: Batten Institute Joins ERPN Research Paper Series Sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation

We are pleased to announce that the Darden School of Business: Batten Institute has started a Research Paper Series sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation within the Entrepreneurship Research & Policy Network (ERPN).

Darden School of Business: Batten Institute

View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Darden-Batten-Institute-RES.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Darden-Batten-Institute-RES

The Darden School of Business: Batten Institute is dedicated to the creation of knowledge about the transformative power of entrepreneurship and innovation and to the cultivation of principled, entrepreneurial leaders. We believe that entrepreneurship and innovation are powerful mechanisms for addressing society’s most pressing issues and that economic and social advancement requires leaders who embrace an entrepreneurial outlook and a commitment to innovation of all kinds. (View full announcement)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending September 11, 2009:

1. Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization
by Paul Ohm (University of Colorado Law School)

2. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

3. The Ethical Responsibility to Reduce Energy Consumption
by John C. Dernbach (Widener University - School of Law) and Donald A. Brown (Pennsylvania State University)

4. Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family Background and Motivation
by Vivek Wadhwa (Duke University - Pratt School of Engineering; Harvard University - Labor and Worklife Program) and Krisztina Holly (University of Southern California) and Raj Aggarwal (University of Akron - Department of Finance) and Alex Salkever (Duke University - Pratt School of Engineering)

5. Governance Matters VIII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996-2008
by Daniel Kaufmann (Brookings Institution) and Aart Kraay (World Bank - Development Research Group) and Massimo Mastruzzi (World Bank Institute)

Do you want to know what other users that have your same interests are reading? The Social Science Research Network’s database has a “recommendation functionality” (a.k.a “People who downloaded this paper also downloaded…”) that will tell you just this.  Our recommendation function gives a user a list of papers that have been downloaded by other users. This list will appear on a public abstract page to the right of the abstract. The list contains up to 10 recommended papers that have been downloaded by other users that have also downloaded the paper on that public abstract page. This function may list more content that is relevant to our users than what is listed in just a regular search.

Here is the latest announcement from SSRN:

Announcing Third Singapore International Conference on Finance 2009 Abstracting eJournal

In cooperation with the Saw Centre for Financial Studies, the Financial Economics Network (FEN) is pleased to announce the Third Singapore International Conference on Finance 2009 Abstracting eJournal. This abstracting eJournal is available to all users at no charge and contains abstracts of the meeting’s papers with links to the full text within the SSRN eLibrary.

View papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Singapore-2009.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Singapore-2009

The Third Singapore International Conference on Finance is an international conference that brings together high quality papers on corporate finance, asset pricing, corporate governance, institutional trading and banking. The conference presents an excellent opportunity for practitioners and researchers in financial institutions and universities to discuss and exchange ideas on the latest developments in the field of finance. This abstracting eJournal provides a data warehouse for all abstracts and papers presented at the conference. Abstracts of the papers will also be published in subject-specific journals within FEN and, where appropriate, in the journals of our sister networks. (View full announcement)

Here are the top 5 papers downloaded from the SSRN eLibrary for the week ending September 4, 2009:

1. A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation
by Mebane T. Faber (Cambria Investment Management)

2. Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure
by Michael C. Jensen (Harvard Business School; The Monitor Company; Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.) and William H. Meckling (University of Rochester Simon School [deceased])

3. Governance Matters VIII: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators, 1996-2008
by Daniel Kaufmann (Brookings Institution) and Aart Kraay (World Bank - Development Research Group) and Massimo Mastruzzi (World Bank Institute)

4. Global Legal Pluralism
by Paul Schiff Berman (Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law; Princeton University)

5. Corporate Governance and Control
by Marco Becht (Free University of Brussels - European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics; Université Libre de Bruxelles - Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management; European Corporate Governance Institute) and Patrick Bolton (Columbia Business School - Department of Economics) and Ailsa Röell (Princeton University - Bendheim Center for Finance)

I am very fortunate to love what I do, love the people with which I work, and have the experiences I get to have. My work includes wonderful discussions with very intelligent, interesting people that are very often in interesting academic settings.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to visit Oxford University, the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It is a breathtaking place!  However, even more incredible to me was that I was there to talk about repository technology!

I spent the day with Sally Rumsey, the Service Development Manager of the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA), and several librarians from Oxford University, learning about the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA). ORA has a forward thinking design and creative approach to partnerships.  ORA currently has over 2500 holdings from faculty at Oxford in a broad range of disciplines.  While I learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed the discussions, the best part of the day was the wonderful tour of Bodleian Library by the extremely knowledgeable Wilma Minty, Head of Catalogue Support Services at the Bodleian Library. If you ever get a chance for a tour with Wilma, TAKE IT! 

Note: Tip of the hat to Amy Brand, Program Manager of the Harvard Office of Scholarly Communication, for the wonderful suggestion to stay at Malmaison Hotel. It is a former prison and I highly recommend it!