Academy Fellow

First, Faff has numerous ground-breaking publications e.g. Pathan and Faff (2013), “Does board structure in banks really affect their performance?”, Journal of Banking and Finance (A*, Australian Business Deans Council, ABDC; citations = 538, i.e. about 60 citations p.a.; JCR Impact Factor: 2.269). This article is one of the first to conduct a comprehensive examination of the link between board structure and performance in banks. They find that both board size and independent directors decrease bank performance. Bank board structure is particularly relevant for banks that: have low market power, are immune to the threat of external takeover or are small.

Second, Faff has numerous papers in top-rated journals reflected by 43 x A* publications (ABDC list). For example, Balachandran, Faff and Theobald (2008), Journal of Financial Economics. JFE is a Tier-1/A* finance journal; JCR Impact factor of 5.731. This paper is the first to explore the valuable choices provided to issuers of Australian shares in terms of underwriting and renounceability.

Third, Faff’s work is very highly cited, with career citations exceeding 18,000, h-index of 67. For example, six papers are cited more than 500 times each, including: Nandha and Faff (2008) ("Does Oil Move Equity Prices? A Global View", Energy Economics, A*) and Brailsford and Faff (1996) ("An Evaluation of Volatility Forecasting Techniques", Journal of Banking and Finance, A*).

Fourth, Faff’s research is heavily accessed. The SSRN ranks him 418 out of 200,000 registered authors.

Fifth, Faff has excelled in attracting competitive ARC grants: 14 grants with aggregate total funding in excess of million. This level of grant success is unrivalled in Finance.

Sixth, in formal recognition of the qualities outlined above, in 2012 AFAANZ awarded Faff “Outstanding Contribution to Accounting and Finance Research Literature” [at the time only 8 recipients of this award since its inception in 1996]. Moreover, he is also a Life Member and an inaugural Fellow of AFAANZ.

Finally, in terms of the larger relevance of his work, Faff has extensive international engagement, impact & visibility around research training – with a special focus on research novices: “pitching research” to an academic expert; the challenge of producing research engagement and impact; and “responsible science”. Some things worthy of mention are:

• “Pitching Research” carries the accolade of being in the AACSB’s inaugural group of prominently showcased “Innovations that Inspire” in 2016.
• “Pitching Research” has recorded 19,600+ downloads (very comfortably in the TOP 0.1 percentile of the all-time history of SSRN downloads).
• Since mid-2014, he has presented this paper more than 400 times, involving 54 different countries/jurisdictions, 37 Australian universities and 130 different universities worldwide.
• Notably, since 2015, the “pitching research” framework has become the backbone of the AFAANZ Research grants scheme – receiving approximately 600 grant applications (dispersing about million).
• In March 2021, he founded the “InSPiR2eS” Research Network that now has 800+ members, spanning 78 countries/jurisdictions.

Professorial Fellow, Bond University Business School

Emeritus Professor, UQ Business School

FCPA 1984

AFAANZ Fellow (inaugural, 2011)

DFIETI (Distinguished Fellow of International Engineering and Technology Institute, 2020)

Life Membership: AFAANZ (2012)

AFAANZ “Outstanding Contribution to Accounting and Finance Research Literature” (2012)

Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to Finance Academia in Australia, presented at 11th Financial Markets and Corporate Governance Conference, 2021

1. Faff, R., “A Simple Template for Pitching Research”, Accounting & Finance, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2015, pp. 311-336.
2. Woods, K., Tan, K. and Faff, R., “Labor Unions and Corporate Financial Leverage: The Bargaining Device versus Crowding-out Hypotheses”, Journal of Financial Intermediation 37, 2019, pp. 28-44.
3. Nguyen, T., Alpert, K. and Faff, R., “Relative bond-stock liquidity and capital structure choices”, Journal of Corporate Finance, forthcoming
4. Faff, R., Kastelle, T., Axelsen, M., Brosnan, M., Michalak, R. and Walsh, K., "Pitching Research for Engagement and Impact – A Simple Tool and Illustrative Examples", Accounting & Finance, forthcoming.