Colloquium: Certainly! Generative AI and its Impact on Academic Writing (in Finance)

This paper investigates how the introduction of Large Language Models (LLMs) has shaped academic writing in finance journals. Analyzing over 40,000 finance articles from 34 different journals, we find that readability declined while the use of LLM-associated terms increased following ChatGPT’s release at the end of 2022. These trends are more pronounced among authors from non-English-speaking countries and in lower-ranked journals. Moreover, the effects are strongest in countries that place less emphasis oncreativity and technology and exhibit higher levels of moral confusion. Author-level analyses suggest that while LLM adoption boosts publication quantity, it does not enhance publication quality or scholarly impact.