Scott Hein, Jeffery Mercer, and Drew Winters, Co-Executive Editors of the Journal of Financial Research, have selected two articles deemed to be outstanding.

From the Summer 2017 issue, “Are Short Sellers Informed? Evidence from Credit Rating Agency Announcements,” by Jian Shi, Junbo Wang and Ting Zhang.  The authors find that there is abnormally high short-selling in advance of negative credit watch and other credit downgrade announcements.

The second article selected for distinction is “Bank Financing and Firm Growth: Evidence from Transition Economies,” written by Barkat Ullah and Zuobao Wei.  This study examines firms in transitional economies and finds that firms that use formal bank finance grow at a faster rate than those that use informal finance sources.

We congratulate the authors of both papers and thank all who choose the JFR as their primary outlet in which to publish high quality research in finance.